Summary Judgment

Summary judgment is a procedure that allows a court to decide a claim or defence without a full trial where there is no genuine issue requiring one. It is governed in Ontario by Rule 20 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Hryniak v Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7, [2014] 1 SCR 87, expanded the motion judge’s powers and encouraged its use as a proportionate path to resolution.

In medical malpractice litigation summary judgment is a double-edged tool. Defendants use it to seek the early dismissal of claims they say are unsupported by the necessary expert evidence on standard of care or causation, while plaintiffs resist on the basis that these fact-rich, expert-driven cases usually require a trial to weigh competing opinions. Motions of this kind frequently turn on whether the plaintiff has put forward sufficient expert evidence to raise a genuine issue for trial.

Posts tagged Summary Judgment analyze Ontario decisions applying the summary judgment framework in medical malpractice cases.