Victoria Nancy Cistrone

The registrant, a family physician, failed to respond to a patient's repeated requests to complete insurance forms and another patient's requests to forward medical records to their lawyer.

She also failed to cooperate with the College's investigation into these complaints.

Based on an agreed statement of facts, the Tribunal found the registrant engaged in professional misconduct.

Accepting a joint submission on penalty, the Tribunal ordered a reprimand, a three-month suspension of her certificate of registration, specified educational and practice monitoring requirements, and $6,000 in costs.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario brought professional misconduct proceedings against the registrant, a family medicine practitioner.

The registrant admitted to failing to maintain the standard of practice of the profession through unnecessary treatments, inadequate record-keeping, and improperly performed procedures.

He also did not contest allegations of touching a patient in sensitive areas without adequate warning or explanation.

The Tribunal found the registrant committed professional misconduct.

Applying the test for joint submissions, the Tribunal accepted the jointly proposed penalty, ordering a four-month suspension, extensive terms, conditions, and limitations on his certificate of registration, and costs of $6,000.

The applicant physician sought judicial review of multiple decisions by the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) and the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) regarding her social media posts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ICRC had issued cautions for tweets containing verifiably false information about lockdowns, vaccines, and contact tracing, while dismissing complaints about tweets that merely expressed political disagreement.

The Divisional Court dismissed the applications, finding that the College reasonably balanced the applicant's Charter right to freedom of expression with its statutory mandate to regulate the medical profession and protect the public from misinformation.

The applicant, previously declared a vexatious litigant, applied for leave to continue three existing actions and to rescind the vexatious litigant order.

The court found that the applicant failed to demonstrate reasonable grounds for the proceedings and that continuing them would be an abuse of process, noting a history of unpaid costs orders and failure to advance litigation.

The court also declined to rescind the vexatious litigant order, finding the applicant had not learned from past mistakes and continued to exhibit abusive litigation behaviour.

The application was dismissed in its entirety.

The appellant appealed a decision of an Associate Judge dismissing her motion to extend the time to file a statement of claim and serve an amended notice of action in a medical negligence case.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding no palpable and overriding error in the Associate Judge's conclusions that the appellant failed to provide a reasonable explanation for the delay and that the respondents would suffer prejudice if the extension were granted.

The court declined to decide whether intentional delay by a plaintiff is determinative, as the other findings were sufficient to dispose of the appeal.

The appellants appealed a Master's decision refusing to set aside a Registrar's order dismissing their medical negligence action for delay.

The action was dismissed in 2013, but the appellants did not learn of this until 2019 due to their former lawyer's conduct.

The Divisional Court upheld the Master's decision, finding no error in the application of the Reid test.

The Master reasonably concluded that the defendants' interest in finality after a six-year delay outweighed the appellants' interest in a hearing on the merits, particularly given the appellants' potential claim against their former lawyer.

Following an appeal of a Master's order extending the time to set the action down for trial, the parties made written submissions on costs.

The court found that there was divided success on the appeal, as the appellants successfully challenged the Master's reasoning but the respondents successfully affirmed the ultimate outcome.

Balancing the factors under Rule 57.01, the court ordered that all parties bear their own costs.

The defendants appealed a Master's decision granting the plaintiffs an extension of time to set their medical malpractice action down for trial under Rule 48.14(7).

The Superior Court found that the Master erred in law by applying a 'contextual analysis' that relaxed the requirement to meet both parts of the conjunctive test for delay, and erred in fact by relying on evidence outside the record.

However, exercising its own discretion under s. 134 of the Courts of Justice Act, the Court determined the motion on the record and found the plaintiffs had provided an acceptable explanation for the delay and that the defendants would suffer no non-compensable prejudice.

The Court affirmed the 12-month extension but set aside the Master's costs award, ordering no costs for the motion.

The plaintiff brought a motion seeking leave to amend her notice of action, extend the time to file a statement of claim, and extend the time to serve the amended notice of action and statement of claim in a medical malpractice case.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the plaintiff's deliberate decision to put her case on hold for 20 months, without contact with her lawyer, demonstrated a lack of intention to pursue the claim.

The court also found that the plaintiff failed to provide a reasonable explanation for the delay and that the defendants would suffer significant prejudice due to the passage of over four years since the events, leading to memory loss among medical professionals and loss of opportunity for timely investigation by the hospital.

The plaintiffs moved for an order granting additional time to set their medical malpractice action down for trial, five years after its commencement.

The motion proceeded as a status hearing under Rule 48.14, requiring the plaintiffs to show cause why the action should not be dismissed for delay.

The court considered the explanation for delay, the alleged non-compensable prejudice to the defendants, and the overarching principle of resolving disputes on their merits.

The court found the plaintiffs provided a reasonable explanation for the delay, particularly given the complex medical issues, the death of the lead plaintiff, and difficulties in securing expert evidence.

The court was not convinced that the defendants would suffer non-compensable prejudice.

The motion to extend time was granted, and a timetable was to be established.

The self-represented moving party sought orders dispensing with the requirement to file transcripts and a signed copy of the order being appealed in her motion for leave to appeal to the Divisional Court.

The moving party argued that filing these documents would prejudice her by acknowledging procedural irregularities and the presence of non-parties.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that the transcripts were not required under the rules in the first place, and that the signed order was a mandatory component of the motion record that caused no prejudice.

Costs were awarded to the respondents on a partial indemnity basis.