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Last Updated: Jan 31st, 2007 - 10:58:43 |
Bitten by the legal bug
Nov 8, 2006, 17:03
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Pardon me for being somewhat unsympathetic to people who have suffered a terrible injury or illness, but you can't help sighing with relief that the Ontario Court of Appeal last week tossed out a $75-million lawsuit brought by victims of West Nile virus. Much as we all acknowledge that this is a horrible disease, there is something bizarre in the recent trend to hold governments responsible for every mosfortune that befalls individuals. We saw this with Walkerton and SARS. Instead of blaming two sloppy workers or getting down to treating the disease, the immediate reaction of some people is to point the finger at government and expect them to wave a magic wand to stop it from happening. To some extent Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government bought into the cradle-to-grave nanny syndrome, when it attempted to outlaw sushi and in its ban on pitbulls. "The risk of contracting disease spread by mosquitoes is one to which all who live in Ontario are exposed," the judgment says. "It is not a risk that is created by the provincial government or that arises from the use of a public facility, such as a highway, provided by Ontario." Exactly. In other words, the government cannot take responsibility for every new threat to your welfare that comes along. At some point, individuals have to take measures to ensure their own health and safety. Frankly, I even find the lawsuit by the provinces against big tobacco to be quite ludicrous. People have known for generations that cigarette smoking is bad for them. I can remember, w-a-a-a-a-y back when I was a teenager, that we were warned off the evil weed - tobacco that is, not pot, which of course was then, and continues to be, politically correct for people to smoke. Don't get me wrong. I don't smoke - although I once did and quit. I don't like being around smokers. I don't allow smoking in my house. But who by now doesn't know the catastrophic health effects of cigarettes? We've been nagged, badgered, preached to and scared silly with grisly ads for decades. It's a bit hypocritical for governments, having taxed this legal product, to now turn around and sue the producers. Surely having lived off the avails of tobacco, so to speak, successive provincial governments have prostituted themselves to the tobacco industry and are almost complicit in damaging people's health. If it's so bad for us, why don't they outlaw it? Douglas Elliott, the lawyer representing the West Nile victims, says this ruling is bad news for others who seek to hold public health officials to account. (West Nile victims say the province didn't warn them or protect them from West Nile disease in 2001-02.) "If people suffer illness or even death, (officials) have nothing to worry about because they cannot be sued." Elliott told a news conference last week. The 40 families involved must now decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Look, public health officials can't remove the cigarette from your mouth or swat that mosquito for you. Yet nowadays we even expect public health officials to check that restaurants are clean. Do we really need to spend millions doing that when really all it takes is for savvy diners to show a bit more initiative when it comes to choosing their eateries? It used to be public health was all about ensuring children were vaccinated. Now it has become a catch-all for everything that ails us. Health officials should be able to make decisions based on sound medical practice, not on whether they will be sued at some future date. Life is tough. It is a cruel and often tragic part of life that people get sick. Sometimes they die. But we live in a litigious society where any time something bad happens, we need to point a finger and find a villain. Meanwhile, we are tying up millions of dollars in legal costs doing so. That's money that could be spent on, say, public health. It's enough to make me sick. Hmmm. So who can I sue?
© Copyright 2006 by CigarettesOn.Com
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