Court Reverses Father's Decision to Ground Daughter by Keeping Her from a School Overnight Trip. I just love it how the Onion can take real practices and extrapolate them three steps forward to the utterly absurd.
The article is on what must be some mirror site for The Onion — something in Canada called TheGlobeAndMail.com. And it's odd, but the other stories on the site don't seem that funny. Well, here's an excerpt:
First, the father banned his 12-year-old daughter from going online after she posted photos of herself on a dating site. Then she allegedly had a row with her stepmother, so the father said his girl couldn't go on a school trip.
The girl took the matter to the court ... [and] Madam Justice Suzanne Tessier of the Quebec Superior Court ruled on Friday that the father couldn't discipline his daughter by barring her from the school trip....
Lucie Fortin, the lawyer representing the 12-year-old, said the judge found that depriving the girl of the school trip was an excessive punishment.
She said the girl has already been forbidden to use the Internet and her father also punished her by cancelling her participation in an extracurricular event.
In an odd twist for The Onion, the satire goes on to give some pretty humdrum and not very funny details. (Is The Onion losing its touch?) The story notes that the trip was a three-day outing marking the girl's graduation from sixth grade, and apparently not a part of the school's educational curriculum. The story also notes that the parents are divorced, and "[the girl's] father has legal custody but for the past month she has lived with her mother," but the story describes the matter as a dispute between the girl and the father, not a dispute between the two parents' judgment or a question about whether the mother should get temporary or permanent legal decisionmaking authority.
In any case, it's great humor, despite the excess of realistic detail. Thanks to Dennis Nolan for the pointer. I should note that there's a small chance that the story isn't a satire after all, but, really, given the absurdity, how likely is that?
UPDATE: Commenter David Malmstrom points to another news story that suggests the matter might indeed have been partly a dispute between parents: "The girl's mother allowed her to go on the trip, but because the school wouldn't allow the girl to go unless both parents consented, the girl, with the mother's support took legal action against her father."
But it seems to me the absurdity remains: It's absurd that a judge would step in to decide whether grounding a child from a school trip is "excessive punishment." If the mother petitioned for a change in custody, that would indeed justify (and require) a judge's intervention, because it would involve a major life decision, and would determine which parent should have disciplinary authority -- something the courts have to do in case of a divorce -- rather than whether a particular grounding decision was justified. But when the school policy is that both parents must consent, which is to say that each parent has veto power, and one parent does exercise his veto, it makes no sense for a judge to decide the matter for herself instead of leaving it to the vetoing parent's judgment.
Forget the absurdity of ruling for a second. How in the world did this case even end up in court?
1) Who is paying for the girl's attorney?
2) What kind of attorney would take such a case? Sure, she won for her client. But lawyers should be on the front lines of preventing this kind of absurd litigation.
My pure speculation is that the biological mother is behind this. In any event, the whole things is sad.
Here is another news report on the case.
Like this piece of classic Canadian humor?
Terrence: What did the Spanish priest say to the Iranian gynecologist?
Philip: I don't know, Terrence. What?
Terrence: /farts on Philip's head
It's real :-)
Imagine what was going through his head the next morning: "oh man, I ruled WHAT?"
If so, not too unbelievable - however, as the article states "Even in Quebec, the decision is virtually without precedent."
Also, what does "Even in Quebec" mean?
"The judge's decision, made from the bench, applies only to the girl's unusual circumstances, lawyers for both sides said, trying to dispel visions of grounded teenagers rushing to the nearest courthouse to overturn their parents' punishments."
and
"Beaudoin said the justice also said there was no reason for the punishment to stand, since the girl was now living with her mother, even though the father has custody."
Before declaring something a total absurdity (and it of course still could be) I think I'd want to look a little more deeply into the real facts and legal issues in the case, rather than just trusting a sensationalistic summary. It at least sounds like some issues of custody situations were actually important to the case in ways not really covered in the article.
http://volokh.com/posts/1213387751.shtml)
to the effect that the state should step in and prevent parents from administering physical discipline, it was only a matter of time before someone said that the state should get even further into second-guessing parental disciplinary decisions.
would anyone like to speculate as to whether the Internet prohibition was enforced at Mom's house?
Without twisting this too much, do you think this is what Obama meant when he said:
This Judge knew what it's like to be on the outside, not to be able to go on the 6th grade field trip. I note that their is no citizenship requirement for the Supreme Court and Obama could appoint Justice Suzanne Tessier to the Supreme Court of the United States.
I don't understand this post. The Globe and Mail is a real newspaper. I only read it for hockey news though.
Canada sucks, and this is more proof of it.
And, let me add some more Canadian humor, since it is a legal discussion, I'll use this:
Philip: Would a murderer go the zoo and feed animals like this? Of course not. So, in summation, find Terrence innocent, or else he'll kill you. Hahahaha! just kidding! (Farts) The defense rests.
Obviously fallout from Boumediene. Absolutely everyone is using habeus to challenge their detentions now.
Of course, sometimes the third person is not hypothetical.
Coincidentally, I TREMBLE for the future of WHIT.
Is Quebec where the kid brought, and won, the "wrongful birth" action against her parents?
In fact, the court is providing the father a great benefit, since the father's role is to be the bad cop to mom's good cop role. Since the court had denied the child the good cop appeal when it awarded sole custody to the father, in order to keep the family functionally strong, the court must substitute it's informed wisdom, tradition of fairness, and la majesté de la loi, for the now missing loving gentleness and forgiveness of mom.
What a great decision! Everybody wins!
It sounds like it was the school who took it upon themselves to ignore the mother's decision for her own child. If the mother had any right to make that decision, the school had no right to ignore it and go ask the other parent.
We scold children for doing that!
That only makes it satire about reporters rather than courts.
The idea that a court of law actually CONSIDERED THIS WORTH ITS TIME is pathetic. Is there any reason why the judge should not have thrown the case out of court ?
Pity it went past a number of readers, though. Aimed a little too high, perhaps?
I envy Canadian youth. My unreasonable parents made me eat vegetables when I was a kid, and the legal system refused to take my side.
See the urban dictionary definition for "sarchasm."
The legal avenue probably existed for other reasons and was abused, much like many other legal remedies. I think Mr. Flemming above was indirectly expressing the same sentiment.
And anyone with experience in a family court knows this sort of nonsense is hardly unusual -- court orders specifying which corner a child must be dropped off at each morning school is in session, instructions prohibiting the parents from speaking about subjects in their own homes, and both the custodial and non-custodial parents being required to report their address, employer, and income changes to the court until the youngest child turns 18, all come to mind. I see no major difference between "who has to pay for Timmy's science fair entry fees" statements in divorce decrees and a judge vetoing a 6th-grader's punishment on the grounds of "dude, you, like, already kept her from texting her friends, what more do you want, like, blood??" And besides, as far as welfare officials and juvenile courts are concerned, these kids are fundamentally "theirs" (cf. Texas CPS.)
Quebec is the only province to be stuck with two distinct charters of rights: the provincial one (made forth by the Parti Québécois' governement in 1976) and the federal one (embedded within the Constitution in 1982). As the latter goes in more general terms (though a bit more precise than the American Bill of Rights), the former is much more specific when it comes to regulating interactions between individuals and institutions as well as individuals between themselves. The provincial "Charte des droits et libertés" leaves the door open to various shades of interpretations, which brings judges to sometimes rule in ackward directions.
It is my understanding that this case was based on a particular article of the "Charte des droits et libertés". To the benefit of the readers, the two biggest newspapers in the province (La Presse and Le Devoir) didn't miss the ridiculous ruling. Tabloids editors (Le Journal de Montréal, Le journal de Québec) also seem to have quite a good laugh...
I can't imagine anyone giving away the Onion. It's much more valuable.