Chronicles of Annette: What next for "Sheila" Annette Lewis?

I've written before on the sad case of Annette Lewis, the Alberta woman who reportedly needs a double lung transplant to survive, and who was convinced by what I can only assume are sleazy, opportunistic, self-serving lawyers to refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which is a requirement under Alberta Health Services (AHS) guidelines for potential lung transplant candidates. Said lawyers convinced Lewis to take her case through the Alberta courts and all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, all of which ruled pointedly and unambiguously that Lewis has no argument, and that it is the responsibility of the AHS to define the guidelines for the selection of transplant candidates.

Let me say that again so there is no misunderstanding -- Lewis was unequivocally rebuffed by the King's Court of Alberta, then the Alberta Court of Appeal, whereupon the Supreme Court of Canada saw no need to interfere with those rulings and refused to hear her case. In other words, she lost spectacularly at every level, which is important for what happens next.

Apparently, after all of the above, Lewis retained another lawyer to sue the associated doctors for malpractice, but ... well, I'll let the ambulance-chasing yobs at Rebel News summarize what happened next:

As you can see, after filing her meritless malpractice action, there was some sort of confidential "settlement", which Rebel News weirdly speculated involved the AHS putting Lewis back on the transplant list. I'm sure you can see why this speculation is the height of idiocy given that, since the AHS had won their argument all the way to the Supreme Court, what sense would it make for the AHS to totally capitulate at this point? What sort of logic would that represent?

In an earlier post, I speculated that, at most, the settlement might represent an offer by the AHS that, if Lewis dropped her idiotic suit, the AHS would not file for discontinuance costs, or something innocuous like that. It is simply inconceivable that the AHS' settlement would include putting Lewis back on the transplant list, but since the settlement is confidential, I guess we'll never know. But there's a couple more issues related to that.

Why would such a settlement be confidential if, in fact, the AHS agreed to re-instate Lewis to the list of transplant candidates? Because if Lewis was quietly and secretly put back on that list, I would think that people who are candidates and were bumped down the list because of that would have their own reasons to sue the AHS for not following its own rules. The idea that Lewis might have been re-instated, and that other potential candidates would not be allowed to know that, strikes me as a potentially massive legal clusterfuck. But there's one more issue related to this.

Over at Lewis' fundraiser, Lewis is still actively raising money, but there is no update since July 18 (shortly after the "settlement"), and I would think that anyone who cares about the integrity of the AHS' transplant candidate selection process might want to know what is going on. Put another way, the confidentiality of that "settlement" seems just a little creepy, as it makes one suspect that there is something untoward happening here.

There may be times when a confidential settlement makes sense -- it doesn't seem like this is one of them. I submit that anyone who is counting on the AHS to make candidate selection decisions based solely on medical criteria has the right to ask what the hell happened here.

And, no, we're not done here.

BONUS TRACK: According to the cat box liner that is the Western Standard, it would seem that the settlement relates specifically to the recent negligence lawsuit filed by Lewis' ethically vacuous lawyer:

"Alberta resident Sheila Annette Lewis has reached a resolution in her negligence lawsuit against the doctors who denied her an organ transplant because of her vaccine status."

That would seem to indicate that the settlement is associated only with that action, and not the earlier set of court cases, so it's highly unlikely that Lewis is back on the AHS transplant candidate list. However, it is exceedingly odd that there is next to no news about Lewis ever since July 18 of this year, even though her fundraiser is still active. Something seems ... odd.

ONE MORE THING: It is worth pointing out that, as explained at Lewis' fundraising page, if Lewis wants to get this operation done in the U.S. (which was the basis for the fundraiser in the first place), the cost of testing alone to see if she is a viable candidate is listed as around $100,000 (USD), while the operation itself would cost upwards of $500,000 (USD). As you can see, not only has that fundraiser page pulled in just barely enough to cover the testing, but the donations recently have effectively stalled:

If you're looking to collect another half a million, getting a couple hundred dollars over a week and a half is not going to cut it -- not even close. In short, other than someone dropping half a mil in that fundraiser, that American operation is simply not happening. So what is Lewis' plan now? And what is going to happen with all that money? I think it's safe to say that, in all of this, only the lawyers have made out like bandits.