Medical malpractice

The plaintiff sued the defendant surgeon for medical malpractice following a brachial plexus injury sustained during shoulder replacement surgery.

The sole issue was whether the plaintiff proved surgical negligence.

The court concluded that the injury was more likely than not the result of surgical negligence, specifically due to excessive force or prolonged stretch applied to the arm during the glenoid exposure phase of the surgery.

The court found for the plaintiff, dismissing the defendant's arguments regarding non-negligent causes and emphasizing that while a bad outcome alone does not prove negligence, the extreme rarity and nature of the injury provided strong circumstantial evidence of a breach of the standard of care.

This is a motion for court approval of a settlement in a complex medical malpractice case involving a person under disability, Nathaniel Hughes.

The plaintiffs sought approval of a $4.5 million settlement, including a structured annuity, for injuries sustained by Nathaniel as an infant at Peterborough Regional Health Centre.

The court reviewed the settlement under Rule 7.08 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, considering the risks of litigation and the best interests of the person under disability.

The court found the settlement, including legal fees and disbursements, to be fair and reasonable given the complexities and risks, and approved it.

The defendant, Dr. Allan Wojciech Jackiewicz, brought a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the plaintiffs' medical malpractice action, arguing it was statute-barred under the Limitations Act, 2002.

The plaintiffs alleged negligence during a surgery in January 2010, claiming they only discovered malpractice after a 2019 news article.

The court found that the plaintiffs had sufficient material facts by December 2010, and certainly by 2012-2013, to infer a plausible claim of liability, including knowledge of surgical complications, a non-consented procedure, and a 2010 news article about the defendant's professional misconduct.

The court ruled that the 2019 article provided no new material facts relevant to their specific claim and that the plaintiffs failed to act with reasonable diligence.

The motion for summary judgment was granted, and the action was dismissed as statute-barred.

The appellants appealed a trial judge's decision to reduce prejudgment interest on non-pecuniary damages from the presumptive 5% to 1.3%.

The Court of Appeal found the trial judge erred by misinterpreting the statutory scheme under the Courts of Justice Act and Rules of Civil Procedure, failing to consider all mandatory factors under s. 130(2), and misinterpreting "changes in market interest rates." The Court clarified that the 5% rate is presumptive and can only be deviated from in unusual or special circumstances, with the onus on the party seeking deviation.

The appeal was allowed, and the 5% rate was reinstated.

This is an appeal from a medical malpractice judgment where the trial judge found the appellant physician negligent in treating a stroke victim, leading to permanent injuries.

The core issue on appeal was causation: whether the trial judge erred in finding that the physician's negligence caused the injuries, specifically by not requiring the plaintiff to establish precisely which treatment option would have prevented the unfavourable outcome.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, affirming the trial judge's robust and pragmatic application of the "but for" causation test, particularly in the context of an evidentiary gap created by the defendant's negligence.

This decision addresses an evidentiary dispute during a trial regarding the admissibility of post-assessment medical reports through a defendant fact witness, Dr. McPherson.

The defendants sought to introduce reports created after Dr. McPherson's last assessment of the plaintiff, Jeremy Veran, to demonstrate improvement in symptoms.

The plaintiffs objected, arguing Dr. McPherson had not seen these documents and was not an expert witness.

The court ruled that documents not seen or received by Dr. McPherson, and not directly relevant to his care of the plaintiff, could not be introduced through him as a fact witness, even if they were part of the joint book of documents.

This ruling addresses the admissibility of proposed Crown expert opinion evidence from Dr. Mark Crowther in a first-degree murder trial against Dr. Brian Nadler.

Dr. Nadler is accused of causing the deaths of four patients through the administration of narcotics and sedatives.

The Crown sought to introduce Dr. Crowther's "holistic" analysis, which contradicted the findings of forensic pathologists who concluded the deaths were due to natural causes.

The court, applying the Mohan criteria, found that Dr. Crowther, a hematologist, lacked the specific expertise in forensic pathology, toxicology, palliative care, or acute COVID-19 treatment relevant to the complex medical issues at hand.

Despite his impressive general credentials, the court determined his expertise was not properly connected to the material issues, posing a risk that his general impressiveness would give his opinion undue weight.

Consequently, Dr. Crowther's expert opinion evidence was ruled inadmissible.

The defendants, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences and Dr. Omar Ghaffar, brought motions for summary judgment to dismiss a medical malpractice action.

The plaintiff, Donald Jameson Whitehead, failed to file any expert evidence or affidavit evidence in response, despite being self-represented and advised of the requirements.

The court found that the defendants had discharged their evidentiary burden by providing expert opinions that their care met the standard of care and that consent was properly obtained.

Given the plaintiff's failure to adduce expert evidence, which is generally fatal in medical malpractice cases except in the clearest of circumstances, the court concluded there was no genuine issue requiring a trial.

The motions for summary judgment were granted, and the action was dismissed.

The appellants, a family, sued a hospital and medical professionals for medical malpractice after their son suffered a severe brain injury at birth.

The trial judge discharged the jury mid-trial and then dismissed the action.

On appeal, the Court of Appeal for Ontario found that the trial judge failed to provide adequate reasons for discharging the jury, which is a fundamental right.

The reasons were conclusory, did not explain which comments were prejudicial, or why corrective instructions would be insufficient.

The appellate court could not meaningfully review the decision.

Consequently, the appeal was allowed, and a new trial was ordered.

This is an appeal from a medical negligence action.

The appellants, the spouse and sons of the deceased, Brian Willick, sued Dr. Willard (emergency surgeon) and Dr. Csanadi (family doctor) for alleged negligence in treating Mr. Willick after a fall, which they claimed led to his death from a ruptured splenic hematoma.

The trial judge dismissed the action, finding that the doctors met the standard of care and that there was no detectable splenic injury attributable to the initial fall.

The appellants challenged the trial judge's application of causation, sufficiency of reasons on standard of care, and credibility assessments.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, affirming the trial judge's findings that the respondent doctors met their respective standards of care, deferring to the trial judge's credibility findings, and concluding that the causation analysis was not flawed given the absence of a breach of duty.

The court also noted that the trial judge's reasons, while terse, were adequate for appellate review.

The plaintiff, Cary Beazley, sued 27 physicians and Queensway Carleton Hospital for medical malpractice, alleging delayed diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease.

Three motions for summary judgment were heard: one by the defendant physicians, one by the Hospital, and a cross-motion by the plaintiff seeking a finding of liability in his favour.

The court dismissed the plaintiff's claims against all defendants, finding that the plaintiff failed to provide admissible expert evidence to support his claims in negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty.

The court also denied the plaintiff's request to file a second expert affidavit and to be qualified as an expert.

The defendants brought a motion to dismiss the action by the minor plaintiffs due to the litigation guardian's failure to appoint new counsel, as required by a previous court order and the Rules of Civil Procedure.

The litigation guardian, who was self-represented for his personal claim, had not retained a lawyer for the minor plaintiffs despite over a year passing since the previous lawyers were removed from the record.

The court found insufficient evidence of diligent efforts to find counsel and emphasized the mandatory requirement for a litigation guardian to be represented by a lawyer.

The motion was granted, dismissing the minor plaintiffs' claims.

This decision provides supplementary reasons to a prior motion to strike pleadings in a medical malpractice case.

The court ruled on previously unaddressed paragraphs and clarified others in the Statement of Claim and Proposed Amended Statement of Claim.

It addressed allegations related to a doctor's deficient skills, failure to disclose, and the hospital's knowledge of complaints.

The court struck certain pleadings that improperly referenced unidentified prior conduct without sufficient material facts, while upholding others related to breach of fiduciary duty and punitive damages where sufficient material facts were pleaded.

This post-verdict motion concerned the deductibility of long-term disability (LTD) and pension contribution benefits from a jury's award for past income loss in a medical malpractice action.

The defendant sought to deduct these benefits to prevent double recovery by the plaintiff.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that while the LTD benefits were an indemnity and the plaintiff did not prove direct contribution, the City's contractual right to reimbursement for any overcompensation negated the concern of double recovery.

The pension contributions were also found not to be an indemnity and thus not deductible.

The defendant, Dr. Yair Karas, moved for summary judgment, asserting that the plaintiff's medical malpractice action was statute-barred under the Limitations Act.

The plaintiff, Denise Bosse, alleged claims of uninformed consent and breach of standard of care related to Radial Keratotomy (RK) surgeries performed by the defendant between 1994 and 2005.

The court found that the plaintiff had actual and constructive knowledge of her injury, its cause by the defendant's acts, and that a legal proceeding was an appropriate remedy by July 11, 2011, when she filed a complaint with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Consequently, the two-year limitation period expired in July 2013, nine months before the Statement of Claim was issued in April 2014.

The court dismissed the plaintiff's argument that the standard of care claim was only discoverable upon receipt of an expert report in November 2013, emphasizing that knowledge of a breach of standard of care is not required for discoverability.

The defendant's motion for summary judgment was granted, and the action was dismissed.

The appellant, Dr. Mistry, appealed an Associate Justice's order that granted a motion to add him and Dr. Karmali-Rawji as defendants in a medical malpractice action.

The core issue was whether the claim against Dr. Mistry for delayed diagnosis and failure to refer was statute-barred under the Limitations Act, 2002.

The Master had found the claim was discovered in May 2017 when the plaintiff's counsel reviewed medical records, thus the limitation period had not expired.

Dr. Mistry argued the claim was discoverable earlier, by February 2015.

The court dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding error in the Master's decision.

It affirmed that the plaintiff, an unsophisticated litigant, and his counsel could not have drawn a plausible inference of liability against Dr. Mistry without the new information from the full medical records, which revealed the spinal lesion was diagnosable earlier.

This is an appeal from a Divisional Court decision that upheld a trial judge's refusal to enter judgment in accordance with a jury verdict in a medical malpractice case.

The jury found the defendant physicians negligent and that their negligence caused the plaintiff's severe disabilities.

The trial judge ordered a new trial, finding the jury's answers on causation insufficient.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, holding that the trial judge erred in refusing to enter judgment.

The court emphasized the high standard for setting aside jury verdicts and the presumption that juries understand and apply judicial instructions, even if their answers are conclusory.

The judgment of $14.9 million in damages was reinstated.

The appellant, Patricia Ann Smith, appealed the dismissal of her medical malpractice action against Dr. Brenda Kane.

The trial judge found no breach of the standard of care by Dr. Kane in her treatment of the appellant's foot complaints.

The appeal raised three main issues: misapprehension of expert evidence, failure to apply the "ordinary knowledge and common sense" exception to expert evidence, and error in failing to find a breach of the duty to diagnose.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding error in the trial judge's assessment of expert evidence, rejecting the application of the "common sense" exception as it was not raised at trial and the issues were complex, and clarifying that there was no freestanding duty to diagnose in this context given the specific concessions and causation findings.

This is an appeal of the dismissal of a medical malpractice claim.

The Court of Appeal found that the trial judge's reasons were insufficient for appellate review, failing to analyze essential components of the plaintiff's theory of liability and explain his findings on the standard of care.

Additionally, the trial judge erred in his contradictory treatment of a formal admission regarding the abscess location, effectively disregarding it despite having previously denied a motion to withdraw it.

This resulted in an unfair trial for the plaintiff.

The appeal was allowed, the judgment set aside, and a new trial ordered.

The plaintiffs commenced a medical malpractice action after a relative's death, which the defendants argued was statute-barred under the Trustee Act.

The plaintiffs pleaded fraudulent concealment of CT imaging to toll the limitation period.

The motion judge dismissed the negligence claims, finding no causal connection between the concealed imaging and the failure to sue within the limitation period, but allowed breach of contract and PHIPA claims against the hospital to continue.

The Court of Appeal allowed the plaintiffs' appeal, holding that the motion judge erred by deciding the factual question of fraudulent concealment as a question of law under Rule 21.01(1)(a).

The Court found the plea of fraudulent concealment was neither patently ridiculous nor manifestly incapable of proof, and that factual disputes regarding causation should not be determined on such a motion.