This came as a surprise to myself and everyone I have spoke to today. No one was aware that the MSU was a party to a case before the courts, let alone a case on appeal.
I have not yet had a chance to read and understand the ruling of the court in this case. (nor do I expect to be able to truly understand it)
The ruling is available in PDF and HTML from the Court of Appeal of Ontario
I am hoping to do some research into this matter in the next couple of days and to be able to truly understand the story. I hope to be able to do this and get a blog post out.
Tip to student reporters reading my blog: this story is definitely newsworthy as it relates to the operation of campus pubs and the liability involved. There is potential for this to occur anywhere in Canada. This is not a purely MSU story. This is a bigger story than that. It is incidents like this that have skyrocketed insurance rates for students’ unions across Canada.
The Hamilton Spectator did a brief story on this yesterday: http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1162939816301&call_pageid=1024322466723
