‘A day of vindication’: Dr. Brian Nadler acquitted of murder, negligence charges

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Dr. Brian Nadler was acquitted of four first-degree murder charges, and four charges of criminal negligence causing death, in Ottawa Tuesday.

After Crown attorneys didn’t call any witnesses or evidence at the start of day one of Nadler’s first-degree murder trial, Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips entered an acquittal on all charges.

“You are innocent of these charges,” the judge told Nadler. “You are free to go.”

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Nadler was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and criminal negligence causing the deaths of Albert Poidinger, 89; Claire Brière, 80; Lorraine Lalande, 79; and Judith Lungulescu, 93 — all elderly patients at the Hawkesbury & District General Hospital, where Nadler worked as an internal medicine specialist at the time.

Crown attorney Robin Flumerfelt said an earlier ruling from the judge excluded expert evidence, which meant the case had no reasonable prospect of conviction.

Flumerfelt said the Crown reviewed its case after the judge’s decision, and concluded “this court’s rulings, including the exclusion of the Crown’s expert evidence, have made it impossible to continue the prosecution at this point,” he told the court. “For all practical purposes, these rulings have decided the case against the Crown.”

Flumerfelt requested Nadler be arraigned, meaning his eight charges were read aloud, and Nadler entered not guilty pleas, in order to preserve the Crown’s right to appeal.

“In response to that we will call no evidence and ask for a directed verdict of acquittal,” Flumerfelt said, adding under the Criminal Code, the Crown can’t appeal when charges are withdrawn or stayed, but can appeal an acquittal.

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Phillips said Nadler had been “shrouded in the presumption of innocence” since the beginning of the case, “and that innocence has not been rebutted in any way.”

Hawkesbury OPP were first called to the hospital where Nadler worked on March 25, 2021, to investigate Poidinger’s death. Nadler was charged with Poidinger’s death within 24 hours, and at the time, police said the investigation pointed to multiple suspicious deaths at the hospital. Three additional murder charges were laid in 2022. Police said Brière, Lalande and Lungulescu died “on or about” the same date that Poidinger died in 2021.

Following Nadler’s acquittal, his legal team made a brief appearance outside the Ottawa courthouse. Nadler himself did not speak.

Nadler’s lawyer Brian Greenspan said the acquittal was “a day of vindication,” for Nadler, and an unprecedented outcome in his 50 years of practicing law.

Greenspan successfully argued the Crown’s expert witness was not properly qualified to speak to issues “that were central to this case, namely the cause of death,” he told reporters.

The Crown’s expert witness was a hematologist, who diagnoses, manages and treats blood disorders.

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“Not a pathologist, not a toxicologist, but a hematologist,” Greenspan said, adding the judge “properly found” the expert was not qualified to speak to the issue of the four elderly patients’ causes of death, which was “central to this case.”

Greenspan said postmortem exams of the four deceased determined they died of COVID-19 or had pre-existing conditions before contracting the virus in the midst of an outbreak of the Delta variant at the Hawkesbury hospital, calling these “critical facts which, until today, were the subject of a publication ban.”

The Crown did not provide forensic pathological evidence to the contrary, he added.

“In addition, had the trial proceeded, the jury would have heard from an eminent Canadian clinical toxicologist, who concluded after a detailed review of each of the four cases that the medications administered by Nadler would not have caused, or contributed substantially to any of the four deaths.”

This newspaper has asked the Crown is it intends to appeal Nadler’s acquittal, and did not immediately receive a response.

Greenspan said Nadler’s legal team would “respond to an appeal accordingly.”

More to come.

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