Deformed by arm surgery, B.C. apprentice electrician’s court award upped to $350,000 on appeal

Sixteen years after his arm was permanently deformed during surgery as a child, a young man’s award for negligence against the Langley surgeon has been doubled by the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The B.C. Supreme Court made an “inordinately low and wholly erroneous estimate of the impairment” that the doctor’s negligence would have on the future earning for his former patient, Justice Leonard Marchand wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel in a decision released Wednesday.

The court roughly quadrupled damages for Maxwell McKee’s future earnings, to $250,000 from the $65,000 awarded by the trial judge, based on the maximum amount suggested as appropriate by surgeon Dr. Tracy Hicks.

Hicks admitted liability and the case was all about determining damages.

McKee had asked the courts to award him $1.5 million, based on the difference between what he was likely to earn in the future as a retail clerk, graphic designer or photographer compared to what he would have earned as an industrial electrician he was apprenticing as at the time of the 2021 Supreme Court trial.