Neil Michael Abramson

The appellants appealed a decision fixing the membership of three charitable corporations and ordering a meeting to elect new directors.

The Court of Appeal found that no proper procedure was taken to change the members in accordance with the Corporations Act, and the proper directors and members remained the original applicants for the letters patent.

The appeal was allowed, and the court ordered meetings of the original members to be held within 30 days.

The moving party brought a motion to quash the responding party's cross-appeal, arguing that the responding party was required to obtain leave to cross-appeal because the cross-appeal raised different issues than the moving party's appeal.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the motion, holding that under Rule 61.07(1.1)(b) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, a respondent may serve a notice of cross-appeal without obtaining leave if the appellant has already been granted leave to appeal, regardless of whether the cross-appeal relates to different issues.

The appellant was largely successful in having his most serious professional misconduct convictions set aside on appeal, but unsuccessful on his main ground of reasonable apprehension of bias, which consumed 90% of the appeal's time.

The appellant sought costs of $132,868.19.

Applying the principles from Boucher, the Divisional Court awarded the appellant reduced costs fixed at $15,000 on a partial indemnity scale to reflect the divided success.

The appellant dentist appealed a decision of the Discipline Committee finding him guilty of professional misconduct regarding his treatment of temporomandibular joint disorders.

He argued that a committee member's prior involvement with a Quality Assurance Committee created a reasonable apprehension of bias, and that the committee erred in refusing to qualify his proposed expert witness.

The Divisional Court dismissed the bias claim but found the committee erred in refusing to qualify the expert witness.

The findings of misconduct that depended on expert testimony were quashed, and the penalty and costs were set aside and remitted to a newly constituted panel.

A physician sought production of confidential reference letters that allegedly blocked his appointment to active hospital staff privileges, arguing he needed them to assess potential defamation or economic tort claims and to clear his professional reputation.

The court held that a free-standing equitable action for discovery, as the modern equivalent of a bill of discovery, can coexist with the Rules of Civil Procedure and may be brought by application where no material facts are in dispute.

However, applying the Wigmore criteria, the court found the letters privileged because confidentiality was essential to candid peer review in hospital staff appointments and the public interest in preserving that process outweighed the benefit of disclosure.

The availability of a statutory route under the Public Hospitals Act to challenge the denial of privileges further weakened the case for overriding privilege.

The appeal was dismissed with costs.