Want to sue your doctor? You'll be up against a powerful group with billions of dollars

On the stand in one of his recent medical negligence trials, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Tracy Hicks addressed his unrelated appeal of a decision to limit his privileges at a Metro Vancouver hospital.

"I didn't really want to win one way or the other," he said of his legal battle with Peace Arch Hospital in White Rock, B.C., according to a 2020 court transcript.

"I wasn't really interested or not. I just thought I would do it — and it was financed by CMPA [the Canadian Medical Protective Association]."

Hicks ultimately lost his challenge at B.C.'s Hospital Appeal Board, sealing his removal from Peace Arch's emergency on-call schedule. He would also lose the negligence trial and be ordered to pay damages to an elderly woman who suffered months of pain because of his care for her broken hip.

Because of the CMPA, doctors are shielded from the financial and reputational blows of court losses and professional discipline like this, malpractice lawyers say.

Patients and lawyers who've gone up against CMPA-funded legal teams say they find themselves profoundly overmatched by the organization's considerable resources, and they question how the public can seek true accountability under these conditions.

The CMPA is a unique 122-year-old institution, largely funded by the public, that defends doctors accused of wrongdoing. As of 2021, it sits on assets valued at more than $6 billion, and spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year defending physicians, according to the latest annual report.

"The CMPA is a Goliath of an entity, and they will do whatever they need to do to protect their physicians," said Stacey McKee, a B.C. woman who recently won another negligence lawsuit against Hicks.

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