디스커버리와 선정당사자 제도에 관한 연구 – 선정자의 디스커버리 의무 적용

The Discovery Research Group formed by the Korean Supreme Court Judicial Administration Advisory Committee submitted a report containing the research result in October, 2022. The above report proposed to amend Articles 344 through 351 of the Civil Procedure Act to introduce a duty to preserve materials, such as documents, similar to the US Discovery Law. According to the text of the proposal, at least some provisions are interpreted to legislate the obligations of the parties or sanctions against the parties, only. If the reason for amending the Civil Procedure Act is to allow a party to access information that the other party has, then there should be no loophole to the discovery rules to prevent the party who previously benefited from not having to turn over the information from using the loophole. Under Korean law, certain persons having a common interest may appoints a party to act as a party or parties for the entire persons. If the appointer/former party does not have the same obligations with respect to discovery as the parties, some of the defendants in may appoint an appropriate defendant to be an appointed party to bear the discovery obligations alone. This way, the appointer may avoid the obligations of the parties. In order to prevent the use of the appointed party rule to evade the application of the provisions on the discovery obligations of the parties, when introducing the discovery procedure, it is desirable to clearly define that the appointer/former party has the same discovery obligations as a party.