Medical Negligence

Medical negligence is the legal cause of action that underpins most medical malpractice claims in Ontario. To establish liability in medical negligence, a plaintiff must prove three elements: that the defendant owed a duty of care to the patient, that the defendant’s conduct fell below the standard of care a reasonable practitioner in the same circumstances would have met, and that the breach caused or materially contributed to the plaintiff’s injury. The framework is the same general negligence framework applied to other tort cases, but its application in the medical context is shaped by the requirement of expert evidence at every step.

Medical negligence is distinct from related but separate theories of liability that can arise on the same facts: battery, where a procedure is performed without any consent at all; failure of informed consent in negligence, where consent was given but the disclosure was inadequate; vicarious liability, where one party is responsible for the conduct of another; and direct institutional liability, where the hospital itself is sued for its systems and processes.

Posts tagged Medical Negligence analyze Ontario decisions on the core negligence framework: duty, breach, and causation, in cases against physicians, nurses, hospitals, and other regulated health professionals.