Burwash v. Williams, 2014 ONSC 6828
COURT FILE NO.: 09-43777
DATE: 2014/11/25
[6] Cira
is not a party to this litigation. It is a national company in the
business of providing medical assessments and health services for
several corporate, insurance and medical legal communities through a
network of independent health professionals. Cira was created in June
2012 and is a combination of two companies, namely, Riverfront Medical
Services (“Riverfront”) and Medisys IMA.
[7] The Defendants retained Cira to co-ordinate defence medical examinations of Ms. Burwash conducted pursuant to s. 105 of the Courts of Justice Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.43.
[8] The Defendants do not object to the production of the files.
[9] The
Defendants have requested disclosure of Cira’s complete files. The
Plaintiffs allege that only partial production of the files has been
made to date.
Timing of the Motion
[10] The
Plaintiffs assert that they had no reason to suspect that Cira was
involved in the review, revision and editing of draft expert reports
until the examination for discovery of Dr. St. Pierre when answers and
subsequent productions indicated that Cira may be using third parties to
review and revise the Defendants’ expert reports.
[11] I
am satisfied that the Plaintiffs have brought this motion at the
earliest opportunity and that they could not have reasonably discovered
that the issue existed any earlier.
[28] Rule 53.03 of the Rules of Civil Procedure is
designed to ensure the independence and integrity of the expert
witness. The duty of the expert witness is to be of assistance to the
court. Each expert witness is required to sign an acknowledgement that
they are providing an independent and unbiased opinion. If there is
reason to believe that the expert’s report or opinion has been
influenced by unknown third parties and is therefore not entirely the
expert’s opinion, the fundamental rationale for accepting expert opinion
evidence is no longer present and hence the report is not only not
helpful to the court but may become misleading. This is an issue that is
directly related to trial fairness.
Source: http://www.fairassociation.ca/
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