Can a bank rely on the advice of accountants rather than lawyers for legal advice?

In ordering that the bank must disclose the communications from its solicitors concerning the matters in issue, Taylor J. found that by its pleading in the case the bank should be taken as having waived the solicitor-client privilege. At p. 506, he said: By pleading in the present action that it relied on the receiver’s advice the bank concedes that it must be taken to say that it either received no advice from its solicitors on the subject or that it received advice which conflicted or concurred with that of the accountants. Counsel for the bank says that in any of these situations the bank could still have acted, as it says, on the advice of the accountants. But I think the bank must be taken to say also that any advice which it received from its solicitors was of such a sort, or couched in such a way, that it acted reasonably in relying in the end on that of the accountants instead. The accountants must be prepared to meet that case. Had the bank alleged that it relied on the advice of one solicitor rather than another that, adopting the principle applied in Nowak v. Sanyshyn, would amount to a decision to abandon confidentiality and constitute a waiver of privilege with respect to communications received from both. I find no justification for applying a different rule when the advisors said to have been relied on for legal advice are accountants rather than lawyers.