Monday, November 14, 2022

Sure, Annette Lewis might die, but that's a price Canada's right-wing grift factories is willing to pay.

What I think is an important observation to make about perpetual grifters like Rebel News, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and Keean "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" Bexte -- in their collective wailing over anti-vaxxer Annette Lewis being denied a double lung transplant, every single one of those opportunistic ghouls was well aware before they started fundraising for her legal battle or running petitions that she had no chance of winning that action. None. Zip. Absolutely fuck all. They all knew that, but it was too good of a grift to pass up, even if Lewis died in the meantime.

Here, let me demonstrate.

Lewis' argument, so unprofessionally and unethically presented by the JCCF, is that Lewis has a Charter right to health care in Canada, even if she refuses to follow the medical requirements to be eligible for the lung transplant she so desperately needs to live.

This is untrue. It is not only untrue, it is obviously, patently untrue, as this argument has been made before and it has been kicked to the curb before. Don't believe me? This is the original ruling related to Lewis from Court of King's Bench of Alberta, making it indisputably clear that Lewis has not a shred of a case. One need only start reading at paragraph 47 to see the court address, then savagely disembowel, the arguments presented by JCCF's ghoulish lawyers.

Make sure you appreciate what is happening in that ruling -- the Court is pointing out that there is more than ample precedent that shows that Lewis never had a case from the outset, suggesting that (and I am speculating wildly here) Lewis was led on by the JCCF, who I can only imagine somehow convinced her that she had a decent chance of prevailing, so she should persist in her refusal to get vaccinated, thereby increasing her odds of, well, dying. So it's not so much that Lewis lost her action; no, it's that any even minimally competent and ethical lawyer would have warned Lewis that legal history was entirely against her. Apparently, though, there's ethics and professionalism, and there's grift and fundraising, so you have to pick one. But wait ... there's more.

Astonishingly, despite that legal ass-kicking -- that left no conceivable doubt about the lack of merit in JCCF's case -- Lewis was apparently convinced to continue holding out because, hey, there's always money in the banana^H^H^H^H^H^Happeal stand and, despite there being zero chance of winning an appeal, they went there, with predictable results, those predictable results being yet another brutal beatdown by the Court.

At this point, any ethical lawyer might take Lewis aside and tell her that this case is going nowhere and there is little value in appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada as that will simply delay the inevitable, which is what the JCCF finally did.

No, no, just kidding, they did nothing of the sort:



So it's not that all of these opportunistic monsters keep losing these cases (during which Lewis might literally die while waiting), it's that even the most cursory examination of the history of such cases would have made it obvious that she was not going to win right from the beginning.

An ethical lawyer might have advised Lewis of that. An ethical lawyer might have given Lewis advice that was in Lewis' best interests. An ethical lawyer might have finally advised Lewis that it was time to stop appealing and just get vaxxed if she wanted her life-saving transplant.

That's what an ethical lawyer might have done. I'm just throwing that out there.

P.S. I'm fascinated with that highlighted statement from the JCCF, in that they claim that they need to "review the decision" of the Alberta Court of Appeal to decide what to do next. But what exactly is there to review? I am not a lawyer, but my reading of the appeals ruling is that it says little more than that the original ruling is fine.

Of course you need to read the ruling, but one would think any decent lawyer would be prepared for an appeals ruling that says, effectively, "The original judge got it right." Is the JCCF seriously poring over that ruling and wasting whatever days Lewis has left? That would be just weird.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Lewis dies while waiting for the JCCF to figure out whether they still want to milk this case for all the publicity and fundraising they can get out of it, will Lewis' family have any basis to sue JCCF for misleading Lewis as to her chances of winning this? I imagine discovery would be funny if it revealed emails like, "Sure, we all know we're going to lose, but think of all the fundraising!"

Are there precedents for lawyers putting their own interests above their client's?

CC said...

I am not a lawyer so I have no idea; perhaps others can weigh in on this. Certainly, it would seem that a lawyer has a professional obligation to not mislead their client about the winnability of their case, especially in a case that involves life-saving surgery.

MgS said...

Oh, I’m quite certain that they will dig deep to find a scrap of an “error in law” to work with, even if it means twisting the law beyond recognition.

CC said...

MgS: Possibly, but once you lose the original action so resoundingly, to insist that you're going to appeal when there are no obvious grounds for an appeal would seem to test the whole concept of working in the best interest of your client.

Anonymous said...

Since the Supreme Court routinely dismisses unmeritorious cases without giving reasons, the lawyers will be free to submit a pile of garbage in the knowledge that they'll never be called out on it.

MgS said...

JCCF has never operated "in the best interests of their client" - their entire goal is to undermine the Charter, and they engage in some of the most contorted legal analyses I've ever laid eyes on in the process. (and I've read more than a few of their briefs over the years - *yikes*)

Annette Lewis is merely the latest in a long line of victims while the JCCF continues to hammer away at its radical agenda. Connecting Carpay with Levant and Fildebrandt might end up being the single biggest mistake Kenney has ever made.

Anonymous said...

I thought this part of the appeal decision was quite damning of the JCCF: "Whether Ms Lewis’ Charter rights have been breached is not one of her formal grounds of appeal and her factum did not address why, in her view, the respondents have infringed her Charter rights." In other words, this was supposed to be a Charter case, but her lawyers didn't argue that in their written submissions. The court had to delay the hearing so the bumbling fools could throw something together.

Anonymous said...

Follow the grift. There is so much of it that it's apparently blinding millions.
She is expendable. All victims then become permanent tools in their roles of victims.
Carpay's ghoulish group does not care. They use every possible opportunity to keep the money flowing and their agenda floating along.

Anonymous said...

This seemed to have Send to CC about it:

Michael Spratt
@mspratt
·
1h
Someone needs to investigate Ezra’s grift, unless the money he raises can be accounted for and actually goes to the “causes” he claims he is supporting, it would be a criminal fraud.
Quote Tweet
Alheli Picazo
@a_picazo
·
2h
Are you telling me Ezra Levant isn't stepping up to offer assistance with the money he's been steadily grifting from this exact crowd?

I am shocked, I tell you. twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/…
Show this thread

Anonymous said...

JCCF is getting dinged in court to the tune of $150,000+

https://twitter.com/IsisWise/status/1596695179729461248?cxt=HHwWgIDTpc3zzKgsAAAA

https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto/justice-centre-for-constitutional-freedoms-seneca-college

“They also have the sort of greater advocacy going on against public-health restrictions, and this is part of that greater advocacy. And so (the court is) holding them responsible because they are both both advocate and (interested party) here,” Lund said.

Val J

Anonymous said...

Here's another case the JCCF lost, and the client has to pay costs because she was supported by the JCCF but omitted to mention that until the appeal. Fun reading, I wonder if they will help her with the costs or leave her high and dry.

https://twitter.com/kekinusuqs/status/1602374046251094016

https://www.bccourts.ca/jdb-txt/ca/22/04/2022BCCA0421.htm

Val J