Hospital negligence claims address the institutional liability of hospitals for harm caused to patients, separate from the personal liability of individual physicians, nurses, or other professionals. In Ontario, hospitals can be liable directly for failures in systems, equipment, supervision, credentialing, staffing, or protocols, and they can be liable vicariously for the conduct of their employees, including nurses and resident physicians. Most attending physicians, by contrast, are independent contractors with hospital privileges rather than employees, which constrains vicarious liability for their conduct.
The distinction between hospital and physician liability matters at every stage of a case: the limitation analysis under section 5 of the Limitations Act, 2002 may run differently against the institution and the physician, the discovery obligations differ, the expert evidence required differs, and the available defendants in a settlement or judgment differ.
Posts tagged Hospital Negligence analyze Ontario cases in which the hospital’s own conduct, as distinct from any individual practitioner’s, has been at issue: nursing supervision, communication systems, transfer protocols, equipment failures, and the institutional response to deteriorating patients.
A patient treated at Sunnybrook over three years, a claim issued on the last day of the Trustee Act limitation period, and eighty Doe defendants. Justice Merritt refused to treat the case as misnomer, holding that the litigation finger pointed at everyone and therefore at no one. The three physicians were added anyway, with the limitation defence preserved for trial.
A Saskatoon family went public this week after an 88-year-old man with early Alzheimer’s spent nearly five days on a bed in an emergency department hallway. The story is from Saskatchewan, but the conditions are familiar in Ontario, and the risks are sharpest for the patient who cannot orient himself, use a call bell, or tell anyone something has changed. Where the line falls between a strained system and an actionable failure is narrower than the headlines suggest.
A new report finds one in 10 admitted patients now spend more than 48 hours waiting in the emergency department, and roughly 16,000 died while waiting for care last year. But a broken system is not the same as a winnable malpractice claim. Here is where an ER delay can cross into negligence in Ontario, and where it cannot.
When overcrowded Ontario emergency departments contribute to delayed diagnoses, premature discharges, or death, the legal standard of care does not bend.
Hamilton Spectator coverage of the Hanans family’s $2.5 million lawsuit against Hamilton Health Sciences over the 2024 death of a four-year-old following routine pediatric tonsil surgery.
A settlement on behalf of the family of a man admitted with a heart attack who died overnight after his telemetry alarms went unanswered by hospital staff.
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.
Ontario midwifery negligence case study: failure to escalate to obstetrical consultation, postpartum hemorrhage, emergency hysterectomy, infertility at 30.
A settlement on behalf of a patient discharged from hospital despite signs of acute psychiatric illness, who suffered catastrophic injury within 24 hours.
Communication failures cause some of the most preventable harm in Canadian healthcare. The legal framework, the practical reality, and the federal response.
When inadequate vancomycin monitoring produces a preventable death. The standard of care, the multi-provider liability picture, and the legal framework.
A settlement on behalf of a 40-year-old woman whose hysterectomy was described as uncomplicated but resulted in injuries to both ureters and chronic disability.
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