A 12-year-old girl (now apparently 13) sued her father in 2008 for denying her permission to attend a class trip because she was grounded. According to the father, the child had been using the internet at his house after being instructed not to. He claims the girl was visiting sites he had previously blocked and possibly sharing pornographic images of herself.
This is a no-brainer, right? But this textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit not only wasn't thrown out, it's gone through one initial trial and an appeal, both of which resulted in the girl coming out ahead. How is this even possible?
Of course, there is a lot more to this story. Even the original CBC reporter who wrote extensively about the case neglected to mention the bitter (and I mean BITTER) divorce proceedings. The mother, it is alleged, heard about the grounding and decided she would pay for the trip herself, chaperone, and help the girl sue her father with the help of her mother's attorney. (Of course, you could look at it another way-- perhaps the mother was into the trip before the grounding, so the father found and excuse to mess with them.) Either way, this child is being manipulated by one or both awful parents-- and, even worse, the idiot judge let all proceed as if there were a real case here. Instead, he should have fined both parents $100,000 and taken the kid away from them. Okay, that's a little harsh, we admit-- $100,000 US is like $8 billion Canadian.
Seriously, though, check out what judicial jackass (i.e. the winning attorney) had to say about this:
"Going to court was a last resort," said Lucie Fortin, a legal aid attorney who represented the girl. "The question was that there was a problem between the father and the mother, and the child asked the court to intervene because it was important to her.
"The trip was very important to her."
The last resort? The last resort for us would've been for a compromise and the girl to lose internet at his house for six months but still go on the trip. Maybe. "The trip was very important to her?" Then maybe she shouldn't have used the internet after being instructed not to. For all the punishments we endured as kids, almost every one of them was because we broke a rule we knew better than to break. Tough. Shit. Girl.
The father and mother are no longer speaking, by the way. And so we move on into the 21st century, having learned so little...
Via CBC.
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