Well my friends, the Supreme Court has yet again decided that Canadians have no rights. This time, to enable the BC government to sue Big Tobbacco, they decided:
See, if the government doesn't have to prove specific harm, then really there's no defense against a government charge. They can use any old junk science to demonstrate some kind of "general harm to society" and take your money. Got an SUV? Not for long!The legal ground rules set out in the legislation are not as unfair as the tobacco firms claim, wrote Justice John Major on behalf of the court.
"They appear to reflect legitimate policy concerns of the British Columbia legislature regarding the systemic advantages tobacco manufacturers enjoy when claims for tobacco-related harm are litigated through individual common-law tort actions."
Canadians who want to claim personal damages from tobacco firms have long been free to file individual or class-action lawsuits and can still do so.
The new wrinkle in the B.C. law is that it lets the province file a so-called "aggregate action," in which it seeks to recover money to support the health care system as a whole.
That means the government doesn't have to prove specific harm to each individual.
The Harmful Phantom
"got an SUV" LOL!
ReplyDeleteWill the distilleries be far behind? And what of grow ops? Why not them, too?