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 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.
Alberta court awards over $16.5 million to child who suffered quadruple amputation after delayed recognition of bacterial superinfection in pediatric RSV.
BC court dismisses ED malpractice claim involving missed subarachnoid hemorrhage where patient lacked thunderclap headache and the bleed had not yet occurred.
Ontario court awards over $1 million to nurse with chronic shoulder injury from improper tetanus injection by family medicine resident at SOC trial.
Ontario mid-trial ruling adopts but-for phrasing for jury causation questions in delayed diagnosis aneurysm case but declines to require jurors to give reasons.
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