Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes. Midwest Climate Watch says October was significantly cooler than normal this year so the mosquitoes buzzed out early, but even so there was very little hysteria about the West Nile Virus this summer. Way up north on the other side of Lake Superior a Canadian Court rules that the government can not be sued for failing to protect citizens from mosquito bites.

Ontario can't be sued over West Nile virus: Toronto — Family and victims of West Nile virus cannot sue the Ontario government for failing to prevent its spread, the province's highest court ruled Friday. In its ruling, the Ontario Court of Appeal said the provincial government could not have been expected to prevent an individual from contracting the disease. … The ruling scuttles plans for a class-action suit launched by more than 40 families and victims of West Nile against the province.

What were those Canadian trial lawyers thinking? I suppose individuals completely convinced of their dependence on government expect government to shield them from any and all unusual harm. Still someone should clue those victims of nature that the lawsuit should go after private business money. A commenter on the story points out the fact Canadian authorities banned high concentrations of a proven effective mosquito repellant, so the logical thing would have been to sue the “bug juice” companies.

Dust My Broom: Well my beef would be the govt has stopped deet from being 99-95% like in the good days now the most bug juice can be is 28% something lame like that. So if the nice benevolent government decided that you can’t use high concentrations of deet to keep the bugs away then sue the taxpayers ass off. oops. I go to the earths bastion of freedom and took one stores stock of bug juice last summer, [in the USA] : ) My family is safe from the Government. For now.

As Wisconsin under Jim Doyle’s leadership moves steadily towards becoming America's Litigation Capital, a West Nile Victim class action lawsuit against manufactures and distributors of a safe and effective product like DEET would not surprise me. ''Sniffle, sniff … the bottle said it would protect me from the bite … sob". Backed by reasoning from UW Law Professors that essentially says, suffering is by definition a non-economic factor but some suffering can be defined as worth more money than other suffering, why wouldn’t trial lawyers try and find emotion prone cheesehead juries?

Selling bonds for operating expenses, selling contacts for contributions, selling the court system to trial lawyers and selling Wisconsin down the river. Some of the many reasons I am voting to retire Jim Doyle.