Law360 Canada ( December 1, 2016, 7:00 PM EST) -- Appeal by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) from a judgment of the Ontario Court of Appeal affirming a decision which denied RBC’s motion for an order compelling the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) to produce a mortgage discharge statement. The appeal raised the issue of the proper interpretation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The RBC was a judgment creditor of Phat and Phuong Trang (the Trangs) and sought a sheriff’s sale of the Trangs’ property, for which the sheriff required a mortgage discharge statement. The RBC had been unable to obtain the statement from the Trangs and thus brought a motion to compel the Scotiabank, the Trangs’ mortgagee, to produce the mortgage discharge statement. The motion judge denied the RBC’s motion and the majority of the Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge’s decision. The Court of Appeal concluded that a mortgage discharge statement was “personal information” for the purposes of PIPEDA, and that the Trangs did not impliedly consent to disclosure of the mortgage discharge statement. It declined to overrule prior jurisprudence set out in the Citi Cards decision and observed that the exceptions in PIPEDA for disclosure ordered by a court (under s. 7(3)(c)) and required by law (under s. 7(3)(i)) did not apply. The majority of the Court of Appeal also observed that RBC could have obtained the mortgage discharge statement in other ways. For example, the RBC could have obtained the Trangs’ consent to disclosure by including an appropriate term in its loan agreement. Further, the RBC could have applied for a motion under rule 60.18(6)(a) of the Rules of Civil Procedure to get an order for the examination of a representative of Scotiabank. Under rules 34.10(2)(b) and 34.10(3), Scotiabank would be required to bring the mortgage discharge statement to the examination. Such an order would satisfy the exemption in s. 7(3)(c) of PIPEDA....