David Lee

The respondents brought a motion to dismiss the applicant's proceeding under a not-for-profit corporations statute for failure to pay a prior costs award of $33,265.90.

The self-represented applicant failed to attend two hearing dates and took no steps in the matter since July 2025.

Rather than immediately dismissing the application, the court stayed the proceeding and gave the applicant sixty days to pay both the outstanding costs award and additional motion costs of $12,880.21, failing which the application would be dismissed without further notice.

The court balanced the applicant's access to justice against the respondents' right to have court orders enforced, noting that a not-for-profit temple dependent on donations was prejudiced by the ongoing unpaid costs.

The defendant brought a motion to set aside a noting in default after failing to file a statement of defence in time.

The plaintiff opposed the motion, arguing the defendant had not explained the delay or shown extraordinary circumstances.

The court applied the factors from Franchetti v. Huggins and found that the delay was short, the defendant had been seeking counsel, and the preference is for cases to be decided on their merits.

The motion to set aside the noting in default was granted.

Following a 70-day medical malpractice jury trial where the plaintiff was awarded $3.75 million in damages, the court determined the appropriate quantum of costs.

The plaintiff sought over $3.3 million in costs and disbursements, while the defendants argued for a significantly lower amount, citing proportionality and excessive hours.

The court analyzed the Rule 57 factors, noting the complexity of the case, the necessity of extensive preparation by plaintiff's counsel, and the fact that defence costs themselves exceeded $3.2 million.

The court fixed the plaintiff's costs at $2,404,765 for fees and $628,387 for disbursements, totaling $3,033,152.

During a medical malpractice jury trial, the defendant physicians sought leave under Rule 53.08 to file a supplementary expert report and to elicit testimony from their experts on matters not explicitly stated in their reports.

The court denied leave for the supplementary report, finding it failed to comply with Rule 53.03 by omitting the reasons for its conclusions, and its admission would cause undue prejudice to the plaintiffs.

The court also ruled on several evidentiary objections, narrowly interpreting the 'latency' principle.

The court held that experts cannot use conclusory statements in their reports to ambush opposing parties with new reasons or theories at trial, though exceptions were made where testimony directly responded to new developments during the trial.

The plaintiff brought a motion to amend the certification order in a class action concerning a bacterial infection outbreak among patients who received epidural steroid injections from the defendant physician.

The plaintiff sought to revise and expand the common issues to include negligence, causation based on epidemiological evidence, fiduciary duty, and limitation periods, and to add two subclasses.

The defendant physician brought a cross-motion to decertify the action, arguing that causation and standard of care required individualized assessments.

The court granted the plaintiff's motion to amend the certification order and dismissed the defendant's motion to decertify, finding that the plaintiff's novel methodology of using statistical correlation to prove causation met the 'some basis in fact' standard for certification and should be tested at a common issues trial.

Prior to a medical malpractice jury trial, the court ruled on several procedural and evidentiary motions.

The plaintiffs had entered into a Pierringer Agreement with the defendant hospital and nurses, leaving only the physicians as defendants.

The court ruled that both the plaintiffs and the physicians could cross-examine the settling nurses at trial.

The court also determined the sequencing and phrasing of jury questions, ruling that standard of care must be determined before causation, and permitting 'caused or contributed' language due to the presence of multiple tortfeasors.

Finally, the court allowed the plaintiffs to use photographs of the amputations in their opening address but restricted the experts' use of lengthy PowerPoint presentations.