Hilarious and Pathetic

Must be the summer of class action lawsuits. Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases went up in several brilliant balls of sunrise earlier this month, and the surrounding community brought class actions against the facility, the City of Toronto, the Ontario government, and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. Now hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Canadians have caught class action fever, apparently a symptom of the fear of contracting listeriosis, after Maple Leaf Foods screwed up big time by distributing listeria-tainted meat. Now, I know basically nothing about the legal side of class action lawsuits. Too lazy to do any research. But I know a little bit about the human side, the psychosocial side. I see a class action lawsuit as like the legal equivalent of a pack mentality, with the litigants experiencing deindividuation and embracing a primitive strength-in-numbers philosophy. Thus far the media has cooperated to confuse the shit out of anyone trying to determine an accurate count of confirmed deaths and illnesses from the listeriosis outbreak. Anywhere from five to fifteen people have died, to date, and maybe two or three times that have fallen ill. I suppose those numbers will continue to rise in the next month or two, with the disease’s 30-day average incubation period and all. But I’m guessing they won’t hit the hundreds, let alone thousands. So I find it a little hilarious, a little pathetic, that so many people feel entitled to jump on the class action bandwagon. Listeria hysteria! Oh the mental distress of eating a bologna sandwich and then turning on the news and learning about the listeriosis outbreak and the Maple Leaf meat recall and then wondering if your sandwich may have had a secret ingredient and wondering what symptoms to look for and then learning nausea is one and almost immediately feeling nauseous and dragging yourself to the phone and calling an ambulance and going to the hospital and arriving only to discover that the ER waiting room is filled with people who ate processed meat and now think they have listeriosis. Oh the lost wages from being too distressed to attend work. What’s that you say? Class action lawsuit? All I have to do is sign my name on it and I’ll be part of a big faceless gang led by lawyers going after hundreds of millions of dollars from Maple Leaf Foods? And I’ll get me some of that money? I’m all in!

For better or worse, the class action lawsuit is here to stay. Why not put it to good use? Bring a class action against the Catholic Church. The Pope. Seeking remuneration for lost wages of sin, mental distress (i.e., guilt), and centuries of boys and girls growing up learning very wrong things. The epic battle between lawyers and priests — two thousand years in the making. Watch Holy Water and Habeas Corpus live, only on C-Span.