Cancer misdiagnosis is one of the most consequential fact patterns in medical malpractice litigation, because a cancer that is missed, misread, or diagnosed late can progress from a curable to an incurable stage. It covers a spectrum of alleged failures: a malignancy mistaken for a benign condition, an abnormal screening test or imaging study misread, a suspicious finding not followed up, and a referral for investigation not made or not acted upon.
These cases sit at the intersection of delayed diagnosis and loss of chance. The standard of care analysis focuses on whether a reasonable practitioner should have recognized the warning signs and investigated sooner, and is established through expert evidence rather than hindsight. Causation is frequently the harder element: the plaintiff must show what difference earlier diagnosis would have made to stage, treatment, and prognosis, an inquiry complicated where the cancer was already advanced or aggressive at the point it could first reasonably have been caught.
Posts tagged Cancer Misdiagnosis analyze Ontario decisions involving missed, misread, or delayed diagnosis of cancer across screening, imaging, pathology, and referral failures.
A settlement on behalf of a patient diagnosed with terminal metastatic cancer based on imaging alone, who lived for an extended period under a wrong diagnosis.
A settlement on behalf of a woman in her 60s whose family physician dismissed three years of GI symptoms despite a known family history of colon cancer.
A settlement on behalf of the family of a 39-year-old mother of two whose breast cancer was diagnosed too late after a missed opportunity to investigate.
A delayed-diagnosis cancer claim was dismissed at standard of care and causation, with a 40% contributory negligence finding for repeated failures to follow up.
A delayed cancer diagnosis can be the difference between life and death. A patient’s guide to the common causes and what it takes to prove a claim in Ontario.
The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld Paul Cahill’s trial verdict in Hacopian-Armen Estate v Mahmoud, clarifying the foreseeability test in delayed cancer cases.
Paul Cahill won a trial verdict in Hacopian-Armen v Mahmoud where Justice Brown found a gynecologist negligently failed to biopsy and missed a curable cancer.
Paul Cahill settled a wrongful death claim against a family physician who failed to provide the HCC surveillance that hepatitis B carriers require.
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