At the Supreme Court of Canada? Let’s hope this signals a trending back towards placing responsibility where it lies – with the individual.
Canadians are not responsible for making sure their house guests don’t drive away drunk, the Supreme Court of Canada said on Friday.
The top court ruled that Zoe Childs cannot sue the people who let a known drunk leave their party in Ottawa and drive away in 1999.
Hours before the court ruled I heard an audio clip from an interview with her lawyer. He volunteered a comment that raised my eyebrows – the drunk driver is often uninsured and in no position to pay damages. Thus, the only way a victim could receive compensation was to collect from the host.
One feels sympathy for any victim, especially those like Zoe Childs, who was paralyzed as a result of the accident. However, transferring the responsibility for that crime to a third party for the explicit purpose of expanding the damages pool is not justice – it’s civil predation.
O.T. A conservative MP is in hot water for stmts he made regarding the chief justice. She made a speech in New Zealand several months ago, which was picked up by Rush Limbaugh, and commented on. I read the account of her speech in which she did state that they could do as they wanted and make any law they wanted (or words to that effect). Is there someone out there that could find this. I forget the reason Rush linked to the speech, perhaps it was during the confirmation hearings in the states. Anyway, she said it and I hope someone can find it and get it out there. I do know I reported it to the CBC at the time.
The latest SCC decision should lend some momentum to the efforts to introduce mandatory vehicle ignition lock-out controls to keep drunks from starting their own vehicles.
When they get that perfected, then they could work on a minimum IQ threshold lock-out control to keep some of those other idiots off the roads too. 🙂
Thank you Black Rod for posting the speech I was referring to. Didn’t take long. Wonder if the CBC and thejournalist will do a retraction and apologize to the public for lying to us. As stated before, when I first read this, I commented in the G&M and it was not published, I called the CBC and e-mailed Duffy and every news program I could think of, and it was ignored. I will say that Rush, in commenting on this was not kind to our court or to Canada.
It’s just a money grab. That’s all.