Posted on 07/15/2011 10:44:40 AM PDT by massmike
The Federal Court of Canada on Wednesday ordered Air Canada to pay $12,000 to Ottawa French-language rights crusader Michel Thibodeau in part because when he asked an English-speaking flight attendant for 7Up in May 12 of 2009, he got Sprite.
Air Canada was also ordered to apologize to Mr. Thibodeau and his wife Lynda.
It is Mr. Thibodeau’s second successful legal action against the airline and its subsidiaries. In 2000, he was refused service in French when he tried to order a 7Up from a unilingual English flight attendant on an Air Ontario flight from Montreal to Ottawa.
Mr. Thibodeau filed suit in Federal Court for $525,000 in damages. The court upheld his complaint, ordered the airline to make a formal apology and pay him $5,375.95. Mr. Thibodeau was later honoured by the French-language rights group, Imperatif Francais.
In 2007, he filed a complaint against the City of Ottawa, accusing it of not providing sufficient bilingual services on its buses.
In the latest case, the Thibodeaus initially complained of eight instances in 2009 in which they did not receive services in French at airports in Atlanta, Toronto and Ottawa and aboard three related Air Canada Jazz flights between Canada and the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
run him out in the back country and leave him there
Imbeciles.
making a career out of frivolous litigation, sounds like good money, if you find the right niche of aggrieved victim class and a stupid judge
I would think that if the court found in his favor, the damages awarded would consist of a can of 7-Up.
Do I have to learn French to sue? “Tres’ insane Frog deum-pa-pa”
Doesn’t this tell us the future of bilingualism in the country....any country? What a bunch of cultural Luddites.
it takes five words to say “7up” in French
Westboro transplant?
Oprima il dos, buddy. Oprima il freaking dos.
- Legal, multi-lingual immigrant who resents being obliged to speak Spanish
Perhaps Barbara Billingsly could have helped translate.
If anyone’s interested, here’s an interview with the guy (in English, btw - he speaks it fluently).
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2011/07/14/18421011.html
The vid is on the center right of the page.
While on a European vacation, a couple traveling with us were from Canada and whenever they were asked where they were from they would respond “white Canada”. They were snotty as hell and constantly had their noses in the air. The rest of the folks traveling had a great laugh when we got to Paris and the Parisians could not understand their Canadian French.
How exactly does one order a 7Up in jive?
Definitely sounds like an activist, but wasn’t that the deal for keeping Canada together? It’s not like here where we’ve trended importing the bilingual problem. Either Quebec stays in Canada and French speakers are obliged by public sector workers and officialdom everywhere, or Quebec goes and these kinds of stories become things of the past.
I thought I remembered Buchanan being supportive of Quebec independence, or saying something like that a while ago. I thought I’d also heard that around one of the referenda the maritime provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island) threatened leaving Canada if Quebec did, but petitioning to join us here in the United States of America.
I wonder what they call a Quarter Pounder in Paris?
“It’s like those French have a different word for everything.” - Steve Martin
"All I wanted was a Pepsi....just one Pepsi...."
Why not have Barbara Billingsley translate? After all, Detective Lt. Frank Drebin obviously made the decision and the award.
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