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The court restricted the plaintiffs' solicitor negligence claim to an improvident settlement theory, denied leave for late-served expert reports, and limited duplicative expert testimony.
The decision addresses three mid-trial motions in a solicitor’s negligence action.
The plaintiffs sought leave to admit late-served expert reports and to call Ms. Tara Sweeney as a participant expert.
The defendant sought to limit the plaintiffs’ claim to damages arising from an alleged improvident settlement and objected to the plaintiffs calling multiple experts on the same issue.
The court held that the plaintiffs are precluded from advancing any theory of liability beyond the improvident settlement claim, denied leave to rely on the late-served expert reports, found Ms. Sweeney is not a participant or non-party expert, and permitted the plaintiffs to call both Mr. Will and Ms. Maitland-Carter as experts on Mr. Cardill’s standard of care, but not both Mr. Will and Ms. Sweeney on Mr. Good’s standard of care.
The doctrine of abuse of process does not bar a defendant from relitigating findings from a prior proceeding where he acted solely as counsel.
The plaintiffs brought a mid-trial motion seeking to prevent the defendant, John Cardill, from relitigating whether their former solicitor, Donald Good, breached the standard of care in settling their personal injury actions.
The plaintiffs argued that this issue had already been determined in a prior costs assessment by Justice Hackland.
The court reviewed the doctrine of abuse of process and concluded that it did not apply in this case, as Mr. Cardill was not a party to the prior proceeding and it would be unfair to bar him from making a full defence.
The motion was dismissed.
