All treatment providers must now strictly comply with expert
report rules before been able to provide opinion evidence at
trial.
While obtaining compliant expert reports from treating health
practitioners seems like an easy task, it is not always so,
especially when dealing with publically funded providers
unaccustomed to writing medical-legal reports and uncomfortable
charging fees for doing so.
Until recently, there has been conflicting caselaw on whether
the onerous expert report rules applied beyond medical-legal
experts hired by a party to the litigation. The Ontario Superior
Court in Beasley v. Barrand [2010] CarswellOnt 2172
(S.C.J.), had taken a strict compliance approach to the need for
formal expert reports, while a more flexible approach to opinions
by non-retained experts was taken by the Ontario Superior Court in
McNeil v. Filthaut, 2011 ONSC 2165 (CanLII).
