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Professional Liability and Regulation - On the Docket
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On an appeal from a Rule 21 motion, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Personal Health Information Protection Act, S.O. 2004, c. 3, Sch. A (PHIPA) does not create an exhaustive code precluding a civil action for intrusion upon seclusion.
It is commonly accepted that the evidence of expert witnesses must be impartial and that they owe a duty to the court to give fair, objective and non-partisan opinion evidence.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has reinforced the principle that a persons privileged communications with his or her lawyer should be strictly protected, except in narrow circumstances.
In Horri v The College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Divisional Court reaffirms the importance of consistency and justification when a professional regulator sanctions one of its members. Penalties for misconduct should fall within the range established by previous case law, and regulators should exercise caution before departing from precedent on the basis of “changing social values.”
Class actions are common in the financial services sector. The relatively low bar for certification of such claims as class proceedings means that many such claims are certified. Yet certification is by no means automatic: where the litigation will not be significantly advanced through the resolution of common issues, courts will typically be reluctant to certify an action as a class proceeding.
In Salasel v. Cuthbertson (2015 ONCA 115), the Court of Appeal provided welcome clarification on the doctrine of absolute privilege, in a decision that revisited the case of Hassan Rasouli.
“If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon” –Yiddish proverb
Over a decade after Ontario’s Limitations Act, 2002 came into force, courts are still grappling with when a cause of action is discoverable and a limitation period starts to run. An increasingly litigated question relates to whether a limitation period runs while efforts are ongoing to fix the error that gave rise to the plaintiff’s claim. The Court of Appeal for Ontario recently addressed this issue in Presidential MSH Corp v Marr, Foster & Co LLP.
Administrative lawyers and regulators should take note: in Swart v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Prince Edward Island the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal provided express guidance in the prosecution of complaints against doctors.
When one person negligently causes an accident, the law is clear about their responsibility. But when negligence acts on the part of a number of different parties combine to create a single accident, how should responsibility for that accident be apportioned between them? This was recently addressed by the Ontario Court of Appeal in its recent decision in Parent v Janandee Management Inc.