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 ordered a new trial after a trial judge discharged the jury on her own motion and dismissed the malpractice claim with reasons 90% copied from the defence.
A motion to extend the time for service of a malpractice claim was denied. Two key defence witnesses had died or become incapacitated during the delay.
A young mother left in a permanent vegetative state after C-section. The court found anesthesiology negligence but accepted that an amniotic fluid embolism was the unavoidable cause.
A self-represented plaintiff’s negligence and informed consent claims against an OBGYN were dismissed on summary judgment for lack of expert evidence.
The Manitoba Court of Appeal ordered a new trial after a general surgeon was held to too low a standard for orthopedic trauma surgery, and after the trial judge relied on an undisclosed journal article.
On December 1, 2023, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed a medical malpractice lawsuit brought by a young woman who suffered a stroke after taking birth control medication provided by her family physician who allegedly failed to advise her of the increased risk of stroke associated with that particular brand of birth control pill (Yaz).
A proposed class action against the Moncton Hospital and a fired nurse over allegedly unprescribed oxytocin was denied certification because individual issues would predominate.
A 27-year-old woman died from a missed cerebellar stroke after an ER discharge. The malpractice claim was dismissed when the plaintiff’s expert evidence unravelled at trial.
Three 2023 decisions from Alberta, Ontario, and Newfoundland show why self-represented plaintiffs almost never succeed in medical malpractice litigation.
A pre-term newborn with kernicterus lost her causation case despite a finding that her family physicians had breached the standard of care. The Snell adverse inference did not save the claim.
A surgeon admitted he stopped a colonoscopy without finding the cancer. The trial judge held the death was inevitable but awarded damages for additional suffering.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario affirmed a malpractice trial loss but observed that the trial reasons had not treated the appellants’ claim with appropriate dignity.
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