I have a question about the Reibl v. Hughes test regarding disclosure of material facts.

Suppose the following.

A patient consents to a surgical procedure.

A given risk, let's a 5 percent chance of partial paralysis, is determined to be a material risk, and that risk is not disclosed.  The physician doesn't discuss this risk at all. There are no other problems with the quality of the patient's consent.

The procedure is performed competently, but the patient suffers serious injury.  However, the injury is not a matter of the relevant risk materializing.
The patient's loss concerns another risk which,
1) the patient was informed of (perhaps even signed a waiver regarding), or
2) an unforeseeable or previously unknown risk that the physician cannot been have expected to know about or disclose (perhaps the patient suffers hearing loss or loss of sight).

Is it appropriate to the proceed to the causation question in either of these cases (what a reasonable patient would have chosen in the circumstances), or are these kinds of losses to be treated as outside the scope of the physician's wrongdoing?


Thanks,
Marc Ramsay
Acadia University