E-mail conversations are often relatively informal and the participants, especially when they are not lawyers, can take prior discussions as a “given” rather than fully and expressly repeating them to ensure they have legal effect.
Recently, in I.D.H. Diamonds NV v Embee Diamond Technologies Inc., 2017 SKQB 79, the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench considered the legal effect of such informal e-mail discussions and whether they could be relied upon to be an acknowledgment of a debt so as to extend a limitations period under Saskatchewan’s The Limitations Act (the “Act”).