Case comments analyze decisions of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and other Canadian courts in medical malpractice litigation. Each post takes a single decision and works through what happened, how the court applied the standard of care, causation, and damages frameworks to the facts, what the expert evidence said, and what the practical implications are for similar future claims.
The archive covers Ontario civil decisions across the full range of medical malpractice practice: obstetric and birth injury cases, missed and delayed diagnoses, surgical and anaesthetic errors, hospital negligence, informed consent claims, and procedural matters such as limitation periods and expert evidence challenges. It also includes appellate decisions from outside Ontario where the reasoning is likely to be persuasive in Ontario courts, particularly from the Supreme Court of Canada and the appellate courts of British Columbia.
Case comments are written for two audiences. Practising lawyers, law students, and judicial researchers can use them as a working library of recent Ontario medical malpractice doctrine. Prospective clients and patients can use them to see how courts have approached fact patterns similar to their own. The substance is the same for both audiences; only the framing of the takeaway changes.
Posts in this category are organized by the tags applied to each comment, allowing readers to filter by clinical specialty, legal concept, court, or outcome.
The Court of Appeal dismisses the appeal in Brown v Meaney, upholding findings that two pediatric neurologists breached the standard of care and the duty to obtain informed consent when they abandoned a pyridoxine trial in an infant with a rare epilepsy. The decision affirms that a defensible first impression does not excuse the failure to revisit it, and that causation need not be proven with scientific precision.
A cosmetic surgery clinic recorded patients in consultation rooms and the operating room without telling them. In J.C. v Jugenburg, 2026 ONSC 3061, the court awarded $21.5 million in aggregate damages and $1 million in punitive damages, and clarified how intrusion upon seclusion applies inside the doctor-patient relationship.
An Alberta court found that an urgent C-section taking 101 minutes fell below the standard of care, that two physicians’ combined 50 minutes of unnecessary delay was not a defensible judgment call, and that the delay caused a child’s cerebral palsy. A look at the timeliness standard, the causation reasoning, and why this Alberta decision is persuasive, not binding, in Ontario.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses a prophylactic laparoscopic hysterectomy bowel injury claim where the plaintiff led no expert evidence. Informed consent, the modified objective test, and the indispensability of expert evidence.
Dr. Bailey admitted that her management of labour was negligent and that it caused a hypoxic brain injury at birth. The plaintiffs still lost, because they could not prove that the brain injury caused the child’s lasting impairments. JB v Bailey is an Alberta decision, persuasive only in Ontario, but it is a clear reminder that admitted negligence and admitted injury are not the same as proven causation.
Ontario Superior Court permits late naming of physicians and home-care contractor in pressure ulcer death case, applying the misnomer doctrine to John Doe pleadings.
Ontario Court of Appeal affirms reduction of contingency fee from $4.1 million to $3.25 million in $14 million birth injury settlement involving vulnerable client.
An Ontario internist found negligent for delayed intubation and failure to call an intensivist when a young mother’s severe asthma attack turned catastrophic.
HSARB upholds OHIP coverage denial for pectoral implant removal, applying the situs provision that excludes follow-up procedures at the site of cosmetic surgery.
Ontario Court of Appeal reinstates novel psychiatric malpractice claim by family member of patient who killed his father, sending duty of care question to trial.
Ontario court finds emergency physician negligent for failing to refer 17-week pregnant patient with pPROM to obstetrician, leading to septic shock and amputations.
