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.
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A cardiac arrest during an emergency caesarean section left Sophia Hemmings with permanent brain damage. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the anaesthesiologist’s liability but not her obstetrician’s or the hospital’s, and restated how factual causation and remoteness work in negligence claims. On remoteness, the vote count tells its own story.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario upheld a reduced contingency fee in a $12.75 million birth injury settlement and protected the injured child’s identity. The decision restates settled law, and it is a good occasion to explain what it costs a plaintiff’s firm to make a medical malpractice case possible, and why that matters for access to justice.
How to choose, vet and instruct experts in an Ontario medical malpractice case. From Paul’s October 2026 presentation at Osgoode Professional Development’s Anatomy of a Medical Malpractice Case.
The Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal has dismissed a second reinstatement application by a family physician whose licence was revoked for OHIP billing fraud. Paul Cahill explains why supervision and billing monitoring could not substitute for genuine insight into dishonesty, and what the decision means for patients.
At the retrial of Hander v Kumar, a Saskatchewan judge excluded a neurosurgeon’s apology but admitted the surrounding statements that he missed the diagnosis. The claim was still dismissed on the expert evidence. Paul Cahill explains what the ruling means for apologies, chart notes and malpractice claims in Ontario.
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.