Doctor fights lawyer in libel battle over medical assessment
An appeal is expected to be launched
When Canadians suffer potentially life-altering injuries in accidents, the medical assessments carried out for insurers can be crucial to determining what benefits they obtain.
But a new court ruling casts a murky light on that process, concluding that an Ontario doctor likely misrepresented the views of specialists so it was easier for an insurance company to deny benefits.
Justice Sean Dunphy tossed out an unusual libel lawsuit the doctor had filed against a lawyer, Maia Bent, who complained about his conduct.
The lawyer’s charge that Dr. Howard Platnick omitted critical information favourable to the victim from his report was probably true, and the doctor’s justification “nonsensical,” concluded the judge.
The explanation “amounts to saying that he hoped the report would be true by the time it was used, even though he knew it was not true when he delivered it,” wrote Dunphy.
Accident victims’ advocates have long complained that medical experts often stymie patients with testimony biased toward insurers.
Tim Danson, Platnick’s lawyer, says his client has been unjustifiably accused of having such a bias. Rather than pick facts that helped the insurer, the doctor was trying in his report to digest the opinions of specialists in Nova Scotia unfamiliar with Ontario’s accident-benefit legislation.
Bent’s allegation that he had changed a physician’s report in a separate case was also wrong, said Danson.
Yet the lawyer’s email criticizing the doctor resulted in Platnick being blacklisted as an insurance assessor, Danson said.
“They’ve ruined this guy’s life,” he said. “It not only affected him financially, it affected him personally, with his children, his wife, his family, his friends, the community. It’s humiliating and embarrassing to be falsely accused of something.”
The case revolves around an email that Bent posted on the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association discussion group in 2014.
She noted that in a case determining whether a patient had suffered “catastrophic” injuries in a car accident — which would entitle her to added benefits — Platnick had written a report purporting to be a “consensus” of specialists who actually assessed the patient. But his report left out significant aspects of the opinions of at least one of those physicians that favoured the injured person, Bent charged.
Platnick said the assessment company he directly worked for — Sibley SLR — was supposed to get the other doctors to sign off on his report, while the views were mostly expressed as his own.
Dunphy, however, concluded there is “credible and compelling” evidence that the lawyer could prove her accusations were true — a defence against libel suits.
It was one of the first libel cases handled under a new Ontario law designed to prevent abusive “SLAPP” suits that unduly curb public discussion.
The 2015 law proved hugely unfair to Platnick, charged Danson.
It gave him just 60 days to prepare for Bent’s motion to dismiss the claim, even though 10,000 pages of documents had been filed.
And it reversed the onus of proof, requiring him to show that the lawyer’s defences were invalid before his suit could go forward.
Platnick intends to appeal, Danson said.