As reported in this earlier blog post, in November 2017 the Court of Appeal granted the plaintiff's appeal to overturn Mr. Justice Nixon's refusal to recuse himself from case managing the lawsuit against defendant lawyers Megan McMahon and Taryn Burnett, and their law firm Gowlings.
A new (fourth) case management judge has now been assigned to the case and the two outstanding applications, the plaintiff's application for amendments and the defendants' application for striking, will be re-argued before her.
These applications are currently scheduled to be re-heard in June 2018, with a case management conference before that in April 2018 to introduce the new case management judge to the case.
Some of the issues and allegations against defendants McMahon, Burnett and Gowlings raised in the plaintiff's application for amendments can be read in this earlier blog post.
The purpose of the plaintiff's application for amendments is to add further allegations of litigation misconduct, and particulars, to her lawsuit against the defendants including for the events, and knowledge learned about them, that happened after the plaintiff filed her statement of claims in March 2013/January 2014. The plaintiff wants the full allegations of litigation misconduct before the court to show the enormity of lawyer abuse committed by the defendant lawyers in the plaintiff's underlying medical malpractice lawsuit which caused her damages.
The defendants of course do not want these allegations of their misconduct damaging to them to be introduced to the lawsuit and wish it would go away entirely, and will attempt to deny the plaintiff her justice through an application to strike the valid claims against them.
Due to ongoing delays in large part by the defendants, the plaintiff's original application for amendments has been outstanding since December 2013 (with proposed amendments filed later for the more recent events). The defendants did not file their application for striking until one year later, and nearly two years after the lawsuit commenced.
The date of the June 2018 hearing will be announced in this blog when it is confirmed closer to the hearing date.
