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.
A 17-day birth injury trial. Battery, informed consent, five negligence allegations, and causation all addressed and rejected. A multi-ground defence dismissal.
The Court of Appeal affirmed plaintiff causation in a stroke malpractice case, holding that defendants cannot rely on evidentiary gaps their own negligence created.
The Court of Appeal affirmed a $12 million plaintiff verdict for catastrophic maternal brain injury, rejecting the defence theory of amniotic fluid embolism.
A failed obstetric epidural with a fractured needle did not prove substandard technique. The British Columbia court rejected outcome-based reasoning on both grounds.
The Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal of a medical negligence claim alleging failure to report child protection concerns. The causation chain failed at multiple links.
The Ontario Court of Appeal affirmed liability against three physicians for failure to disclose the cumulative risks of a multi-step brain AVM treatment plan.
A delayed Lyme disease claim against two Ontario physicians dismissed on multiple grounds, including the most fundamental: the plaintiff failed to prove he had Lyme disease.
A young man developed paraplegia from an undiagnosed spinal dural fistula his neurologist failed to investigate. A jury awarded $1.5M; the Court of Appeal affirmed.
An Ontario orthopaedic surgeon was found liable after removing clavicle hardware six weeks early without revisiting his own documented treatment plan.
A widow’s appeal in a death after delayed embolization for a lingual artery pseudoaneurysm. The BC Court of Appeal affirmed dismissal on the standard of care.
A claim alleging that psychiatrists failed to disclose dose increases during a course of ECT was dismissed mid-trial for absence of expert evidence. The BC Court of Appeal affirmed.
A birth injury claim alleging failure to discuss antenatal steroids and resuscitation in a 25-week preterm risk situation was dismissed. The discussion was attempted; the patient declined to engage.
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