BENDIGO and Adelaide Bank subsidiary Rural Bank will be subject to an extensive trawl through its internal communications by lawyers for Kisimul Holdings to try to prove Kisimul's allegations its former head of technology stole Kisimul's database of 120,000 farmers with the imprimatur of the banks' executives.
On Friday, NSW Supreme Court Justice David Hammerschlag ordered "general discovery of documents" by all eight defendants in the case, and plaintiff Kisimul.
The defendants include Rural Bank, its former chief executive Paul Hutchinson, former head of marketing John Marshall, and Thomas Simms, Kisimul's former director of information technology.
Kisimul, headed by chief executive Adam McNeil, alleges Mr Simms via companies held in his wife Sonia Simms' name, has illegally retained access to their database and tried to use it to continue doing work for Rural Bank after he left Kisimul in September 2013.
Lawyers for Kisimul described the order "as far broader than we had asked for and represents a good win".
All parties to the hearing now have until November 27 to produce relevant evidence. A full hearing is set down for June 2016.
Lawyers for Rural Bank have complained the discovery process could require the production of millions of files. They are expected to include emails, text messages, any evidence Mr Simms or the bank had password access to cloud-based records of the database and board minutes.
Bendigo Bank, Rural Bank and Mr Simms have denied all allegations by Kisimul. Mr Simms previously claimed Kisimul did not hold exclusive copyright on the database.
Bendigo chief Mike Hirst has cited forensic analysis of its records by KPMG that shows it has not had any access to Kisimul's files.
On Sunday Mr Hirst said the bank could not comment on the court order, but said he was "very confident of our position".
The businessman funding Kisimul's action, Simon Butler, the chairman and chief executive of Contivio, who has a "beneficial interest" in half of Kisimul, argued the KPMG analysis was not extensive enough.
"Their defence has been limited to outspending and frustrating the plaintiff into submission without dealing with the substantive issues," Mr Butler said.
"I simply don't believe they have undertaken any serious internal investigation to determine what Hutchinson, Marshall and Simms refer to as parking the data in 'safe custody' to allow Rural Bank and others access to assets."
