Plain-language insight on medical malpractice law in Ontario. Practical guidance, case analysis, and updates from a trial-focused practice. No legal jargon. No marketing fluff. Just what you need to know.
Articles on this site are for general information only and do not constitute legal advice. Reading articles does not create a lawyer-client relationship.
A Winnipeg family waited eight months for a report into a death after an eleven-hour emergency room wait, and says it left more questions than answers. Ontario families face the same gap. What QCIPA requires a hospital to disclose, what it protects, and why the medical record matters more than the report.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses a maxillomandibular advancement claim brought by a self-represented plaintiff. An American expert who could not identify the Royal College of Dentists of Canada, a seven-hour video log that contradicted the plaintiff’s trial evidence, and an adverse inference the court declined to draw.
National Post coverage of Dr. Michael Hart, the London, Ontario physician suspended for six months over his ketamine prescribing and for asking patients to sign away their right to sue him or complain to the College. Paul Cahill comments on why that document is an alarm bell, how it differs from an ordinary surgical consent form, and where a College proceeding ends and a civil claim begins.
A self-represented plaintiff recovered the full $50,000 Small Claims Court limit for burns and permanent pigmentation loss from a laser hair removal treatment, without an expert report on the standard of care. The Court reached that result by applying Ayana v Skin Klinic, the 2009 decision establishing that laser hair removal is not a medical procedure in Ontario. The defence bet that no plaintiff expert meant no case, and lost.
A new review in Laws argues that medical schools are not teaching enough law, and that the gap is making patients less safe. The article is European and persuasive only in Ontario, where CanMEDS, the CPSO and the CMPA already supply most of the framework it recommends. The place the diagnosis actually lands is artificial intelligence.
A patient treated at Sunnybrook over three years, a claim issued on the last day of the Trustee Act limitation period, and eighty Doe defendants. Justice Merritt refused to treat the case as misnomer, holding that the litigation finger pointed at everyone and therefore at no one. The three physicians were added anyway, with the limitation defence preserved for trial.
An Ontario hospital patient relations meeting is a complaint resolution process, not an investigation. Here is what the hospital is legally required to tell you after a serious event, what it can keep to itself, and how to prepare so the meeting is worth your time. Most importantly: the hospital’s process does not pause the limitation clock.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismisses Dr. Wang’s appeal in Bradley v Wang, upholding findings that a tetanus vaccine was injected in the wrong part of the arm, that the misplacement caused an adhesive capsulitis, and that no mitigation defence was made out. The decision confirms that counterfactual proof can be assembled from evidence excluding the competing explanation, and that a defendant who cannot show suitable alternative work was available loses the mitigation argument regardless of the plaintiff’s own efforts.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario dismisses Dr. Cavanagh’s causation appeal in Ibrahimova v Cavanagh, upholding findings about what would have happened at a tertiary hospital the patient never reached on the relevant day. The decision confirms that a plaintiff can prove a counterfactual treatment path through a specialist from the receiving discipline, without institutional witnesses, and that a defendant who calls no expert in that specialty is unlikely to recast the resulting findings as speculation.