The insurers and their legal representatives are obviously unafraid of any consequences when they parade the partisan ‘expert’ in front of the court. The experts themselves have no fear since they are self-regulated at their Colleges and are rarely sanctioned in any meaningful way when they harm innocent accident victims. It’s clear to victims that it is only they who are expected to be truthful in their duty to the court while the behavior of the insurer ‘hired gun’ medical expert is given the free pass to cause harm over and over again.
What will you do to restore confidence in our justice system when the proliferation of “hired gun” experts tainting cases continues to worsen despite the Form 53.03 promise to be impartial? Will the Committee help judges improve their gatekeeping of experts by setting out the appropriate time to allow lawyers to challenge medico-legal experts with prior judicial warnings of bias and unacceptable testimony?
Shouldn’t the Committee correct the belief that seeking to adduce prior judicial rebukes for bias is a waste of the court’s time and establish that this is something that deserves punishment in the form of costs and make an effort to block the future testimony of the unacceptable expert? Not doing so has made the Ontario Civil Justice system a place where juries are misled and an unsafe place for vulnerable litigants while it has become a reliable and very profitable adventure for insurers and their medical experts.