The Ontario Superior Court of Justice is the trial court of general jurisdiction for civil matters in the province, and the court where almost all medical malpractice actions are heard. Claims for more than $35,000 begin in the Superior Court rather than the Small Claims Court, and the vast majority of medical malpractice cases proceed there given the complexity of the evidence and the size of the damages typically at issue.
The Superior Court hears motions, pre-trial conferences, and trials governed by the Rules of Civil Procedure, including the expert evidence requirements in Rule 53.03 and the summary judgment framework refined by the Supreme Court of Canada in Hryniak v Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7, [2014] 1 SCR 87. Appeals from the Superior Court go to the Divisional Court or directly to the Court of Appeal for Ontario depending on the nature of the order.
Posts tagged Ontario Superior Court of Justice summarize trial and motion decisions from the court in medical malpractice matters, with particular attention to how judges have applied the standard-of-care, causation, and damages frameworks to specific clinical fact patterns.
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.
Rule 53.08 was tightened in 2022 to stop the routine late service of expert reports. In Pelrine v Chung, the Divisional Court held that the correction can be overdone, and that the interests of justice apply throughout the rule rather than only at its second stage. Two excluded defence reports were let in, thirteen months before a jury trial.
A cosmetic surgery clinic recorded patients in consultation rooms and the operating room without telling them. In J.C. v Jugenburg, 2026 ONSC 3061, the court awarded $21.5 million in aggregate damages and $1 million in punitive damages, and clarified how intrusion upon seclusion applies inside the doctor-patient relationship.
In Forget v Gibb, 2026 ONSC 626, the Ontario court dismissed a surgical negligence claim and delivered a sharp critique of the plaintiff’s expert.
Ontario Superior Court permits late naming of physicians and home-care contractor in pressure ulcer death case, applying the misnomer doctrine to John Doe pleadings.
An Ontario internist found negligent for delayed intubation and failure to call an intensivist when a young mother’s severe asthma attack turned catastrophic.
Ontario court finds emergency physician negligent for failing to refer 17-week pregnant patient with pPROM to obstetrician, leading to septic shock and amputations.
Ontario court awards over $1 million to nurse with chronic shoulder injury from improper tetanus injection by family medicine resident at SOC trial.
Ontario mid-trial ruling adopts but-for phrasing for jury causation questions in delayed diagnosis aneurysm case but declines to require jurors to give reasons.
Ontario court dismisses orthopaedic malpractice claim after finding hip replacement subsidence was osteointegration failure, a recognized complication, not negligence.
Ontario court denies defendant doctors’ motion for in-home security camera recordings in catastrophic injury malpractice action. Privacy prevails over relevance.
Ontario Superior Court dismisses fatal aortic dissection claim against internist and ED physician. The standards of care for mild aortic dilation and hypertensive chest pain.
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