Down the Rabbit Hole

Welcome to our fourth article exposing the tyrannical behaviour of the Canadian Medical Protective Association to those hurt by medical care in this country.

In one case in the Superior Court of Justice Ontario, the CMPA funded the protracted defense of a plastic surgeon who operated on the wrong body part. Instead of correcting a little girl’s stenosing tenosynovitis (also called “trigger finger”) in her right pinkie finger, the surgeon performed the operation on her thumb. The physician’s and the hospital’s lawyers’ contention? That the doctor didn’t do anything wrong, and that even if he did, he didn’t do any damage — and never mind that the little girl had to have a second surgery and suffered considerable pain, and never mind the delay in the development of motor skills using her right hand. And anyway, if she did suffer damages it wasn’t the doctor’s fault and furthermore, the damages claimed: “are exaggerated and too remote to be recoverable in law”. The hospital’s position was that if there were any damages, which they deny, they were caused by the little girl’s “failure to mitigate her damages”.

Really?

The judge in this case, who was obviously not in the pay of the CMPA, said:

“I would hope those responsible for the approach, in this case, would re-evaluate whether the strategy used in this case to date accords with the requirements of procedural fairness in the administration of justice in present-day Ontario.”

The judge also noted that:

“In a case where the contemporaneous surgical note candidly and succinctly recognizes that the intended surgery was not performed, to deny liability for four years and then force the plaintiff to incur the costs of preparing for and conducting aborted discoveries and then to incur the costs of this motion would suggest an intentional strategy of delay. Plaintiffs don’t have the war chest and endurance of professional defendants.”

In another Ontario case in which a baby became severely disabled with cerebral palsy when the birth was botched by the attending obstetrician, the CMPA hauled out the big guns. The hospital where this medical disaster took place ponied up $500,000 to the victim “in consideration for a dismissal of the action as against the hospital”. But the obstetrician herself, who admitted liability, was represented by partners in a firm which is, according to the law firm’s website, “one of Canada’s top 10 litigation boutiques”. In addition to what were, no doubt, hefty legal fees to the lawyers, the CMPA ended up paying out $1 million to the victim “as an advance against the total judgment that might ultimately be awarded in this matter”.

This, by the way, is the same obstetrician who fractured a baby’s skull during another badly bungled delivery and who caused major blood loss to yet another patient during a supposedly minor procedure. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, in an inspired moment of understatement, later called her “incompetent” but let her keep her license, although on a restricted basis. She is still practicing. We can only suppose that the lawyers are smacking their chops over the prospect of ongoing high-priced repeat business from this doctor.

Another woman sued her doctor because he missed seeing a brain tumor that was evident in an MRI that the patient had. It was there but he just plain old missed it. Three years later, he did finally spot the tumor on a second MRI but by that time, the tumor had become very large. During the course of a six-year battle for compensation, the doctor in that case admitted that he had breached the standard of care and by so doing had caused the patient to suffer what the Court described as “significant damage and injury”, including multiple corrective surgeries and a long list of disabilities ranging from the anticipated complete loss of vision in one eye to complete loss of hearing on one side to painful chewing. Despite the doctor’s admission that he botched the case, once again the CMPA-supplied lawyers attacked the patient, claiming that she had been guilty of contributory negligence, a claim the Judge wasn’t buying. The patient was awarded damages, and the CMPA lawyers promptly filed an appeal.

In another case with a bizarre ending, a Toronto man sued a hospital and some of its staff. He had gone to the hospital’s emergency room where he was assessed and discharged, perhaps with the “take two aspirins and call me in the morning” treatment method. Two days later, he was back. He was then admitted and suffered an acute brainstem infarct (stroke) the next day. This happened in 2009 and it finally wound up in court in 2015. Naturally, a CMPA lawyer was there to represent the doctors. The case was abandoned by the injured patient for lack of funds to hire experts to testify, a malady that the CMPA is immune to.

But as an epilogue to the story, the doctor, in this case, turns out to have been a drug addict whose addiction spanned the period when he turned this patient away from the emergency room. The doctor recently found himself up on 68 charges related to forging prescriptions and trafficking fentanyl. CBC News reports that the doctor had been a long-term addict, starting off with the narcotic Percocets, (an oxycodone and acetaminophen mix) in 2008 and later moving on to Fentanyl. He was convicted in criminal court and got a two-year sentence in a federal penitentiary, significantly less than the eight-year sentence the Crown had asked for.

A dermatologist in Barrie was recently found to have been guilty of “disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional conduct” (a College of Physicians and Surgeons euphemism for sexual assault), the best efforts of his CMPA-hired lawyer notwithstanding. But full points to the lawyer for creativity – his defense was that this doctor’s stomach is too big and his penis too small for the sexual contact he was accused and convicted of.

But the CMPA doesn’t restrict their financing of doctors’ defense to mere medical malpractice and negligence. It really doesn’t matter what the doctor has done to get himself into hot water, it doesn’t matter how egregious the offense, and apparently it doesn’t even matter if the doctor is still a doctor. The CMPA is there to shell out the big bucks to take up the cause.

The CMPA funded a former doctor’s successful bid to be removed from the sex offender registry. This ex-physician was convicted of nine counts of sexually and indecently assaulting his patients during breast and vaginal examinations and was sentenced to four years in prison. This convicted sex offender wanted off the registry and the CMPA funded the lawyers to help him do just that.

And then there’s the Toronto physician who, with the help of his CMPA-funded lawyer, got only a six-month suspension of his license from a disciplinary committee for sexually assaulting four female patients. This doctor had already previously pled guilty in criminal court to two counts of assault against two of these four victims. Fortunately, Division Court’s Justice James Ramsay recognized that the penalty to this doctor was “clearly unfit”. Justice Ramsay said that “The public’s confidence in the medical profession demands more from the disciplinary process than recent sexual abuse discipline cases suggest” and added “The facts of these cases are base. It is depressing to review them.” The court has ordered a new penalty hearing for the doctor. And you can bet the CMPA will be there to finance more lawyers for this sexual predator.

So what happens when one doctor sues another doctor? It’s usually not about medical issues. But never mind that. You and I – via the CMPA — fund the lawyers for those defendant doctors as well.

One case brought before the Court of Queen’s Bench Albert had absolutely nothing to do with the practice of medicine. One psychiatrist sued another psychiatrist for defamation when he (the defendant doctor) allegedly called him (the plaintiff doctor) “a paranoid Sikh”. Two of the defense lawyers, in this case, were from law firms on the CMPA’s roster.

Here’s what the Court had to say about this case:

“The Court heard almost three full weeks of evidence in this matter. What emerged is a picture of a very dysfunctional working environment in which name calling, finger pointing, intransigence and conspiratorial workings have thwarted the best intentions of all of the psychiatrists involved to the point that a certain number of the psychiatrists from both factions have left [the psychiatric facility], and a greater number have been left significantly demoralized. How such a group of obviously intelligent professionals could work themselves into such a state is beyond comprehension.

“Fortunately, it is not for this Court to psychoanalyze the participants in this drama, but simply to determine whether [the plaintiff] has made out his claim of defamation.”

It would be funny if the entertainment hadn’t come at such a high price to the taxpayer.

In an Ontario case of one doctor suing another for damages arising from physical and sexual assault, the defendant doctor’s lawyers were from another of the CMPA’s list of high-priced lawyers. In this particular case, the plaintiff doctor (who paid for her own lawyers) won her case and was awarded $200,000. The defendant doctor continued to practice cardiology.

So, where does the money for all this come from? From you and me, brother, you and me.

The fifth article coming out next week is entitled “Show Them the Money, and Plenty of It.”  Stay tuned.