When the commercial landlord's lawyer stood up during the questioning session in a small town in Alberta and posed the 17th of what would become 23 questions to the regional logistics company's operations manager, the exchange that followed captured everything that can go wrong—and right—in civil discovery. The operations manager, a 12-year veteran of the company who had overseen daily activities at the 45,000-square-foot warehouse facility throughout the tenancy dispute, paused after hearing the question about internal communications regarding the landlord's maintenance failures. After conferring briefly with defence counsel, she declined to answer, stating that the question called for information protected by litigation privilege. That refusal was the 9th of 14 questions refused during the examination, and it would eventually form the centerpiece of an acrimonious procedural dispute that threatened to derail the entire litigation over the landlord's claim for $340,000 in unpaid rent, restoration costs, and damages and the tenant's counterclaim for $185,000 for wrongful termination.
The questioning session itself, conducted in 2023 according to the Alberta Rules of Court, represents the moment where documentary discovery transforms into live testimony. Unlike the earlier exchange of records, questioning allows parties to probe the human understanding behind the paper trail—to test credibility, expose contradictions, and uncover the narrative that documents alone cannot reveal. The commercial landlord had sought this examination precisely because the lease termination involved disputed facts about who breached first, whether proper notice was given, and what damage the facility actually sustained. The operations manager appeared as the representative designated to answer questions on behalf of the corporate tenant, meaning her answers would bind the regional logistics company as if the corporation itself had spoken.