The British Columbia Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of six graduates of the University of British Columbia’s MBA program, finding that UBC had the right to ‘adjust’ their tuition fees to $28,000 each from the fees of $7,000 that they had previously contracted to pay.

Chief Justice Finch, for the Court, stated that “although I have sympathy for the appellants in this case, they have not established a reversible error on the part of the trial judge.” He found that the statement in the tuition fee agreement that “fees for the year are subject to adjustment and the University reserves the right to change fees without notice” enabled UBC to quadruple tuition after the contract had been made. He also concluded that the quadrupling was not unconscionable.

This has proven to be a harsh introduction to the world of business for these business school students, particularly since UBC seems intent on pusuing them for court costs.

Read the decision.

The Do RAV Right Coalition will be in BC Supreme Court starting Monday June 20 at 10 a.m. in its legal efforts to force the province to undertake a new public consultation process on the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line because of RAV’s switch to environmentally damaging cut-and-cover construction.

Coalition lawyer Joyce Thayer says she will argue that the province must follow existing provincial and federal laws that guarantee the right of citizens to comprehensive and meaningful public consultation on the environmental impact of switching to cut-and-cover construction from its original plans to proceed by underground bored tunnel.

Other parties to the case include RAVCO, the organization building the line, TransLink and the federal government. BC Supreme Court Justice Robert Bauman has set aside four days to hear legal arguments.

The case was begun after RAVCO announced in late December 2004 that it would switch construction from a bored tunnel to “cut-and-cover” construction which would require digging a 40-foot deep trench along Granville Mall and up the full length of Cambie Street.

This radical design change and switch to cut-and-cover construction will be devastating, the Coalition says. It will create traffic gridlock for 2-3 years, jeopardize livelihoods, and seriously disrupt the lives of residents in the affected areas.

Since May 28, 2005, eight people have died in police custody after being jolted by Tasers. This brings the total number of such deaths since September, 1999 to 128, including 33 so far this year. In our view, no one fully understands the effects of 50,000 volts of electricity on the human body, and use of these weapons should be discontinued until better testing and research is done.

The most recent deaths:

May 28, 2005: Richard T. Holcomb, 18, Akron, Ohio

May 28, 2005: Nazario J. Solorio, 38, Escondido, California

June 4, 2005: Unidentified male, 33, Sacramento, California

June 7, 2005: Unidentified male, Las Vegas, Nevada

June 11, 2005: Horace Owens, 48, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

June 13, 2005: Michael Anthony Edwards, 32, Palatka, Florida

June 13, 2005: Shawn Pirozzi, 30, Canton, Ohio

June 14, 2005: Robert Earl Williams, 62, Waco, Texas

A report on taser technology released today parrots the manufacturer’s claims and glosses over 126 deaths proximal to Taser use, says Cameron Ward, lawyer for Robert Bagnell’s family. (Robert Bagnell, 44, died June 23, 2004 after being tasered by Vancouver police.) “Canadian police forces should be obliged to stop using Tasers until truly independent and objective studies have been done on their safety implications”, he said.

There have been 126 deaths proximate to Taser use in North America since September, 1999. [source: Arizona Republic; www.azcentral.com] Ten of those have occurred in Canada. There have been 31 deaths in North America this year alone, with the most recent occurring yesterday, June 13, 2005, in Palatka, Florida. Taser International Inc., the weapon’s manufacturer, claims these deaths are coincidental, and not related to the physiological effects of 50,000 volts of electricity on the human body.

The Victoria Police Department report contains no real analysis of these fatalities, which is predictable. The Victoria Police Department and at least one of its authors have been proponents of Tasers since the Department became the first Canadian police force to start using the devices in 1998. Report contributor Sgt. Darren Laur has personally profited from his relationship with Taser International Inc., having received direct payments and stock options from the company in undisclosed amounts. He was also quoted in 2000 as saying, “My goal would be to see a Taser in every patrol car”. [source: Schizophrenia Digest, Sept./Oct. 2000]. The Victoria Police Department also holds the dubious distinction of having used a Taser on an 82 year-old, one of the oldest persons ever to be shocked by the weapon. [source: Victoria Times Colonist, March 2, 2005] American police forces have used Tasers on children as young as six.

The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner was right to commission a report into the safety of Tasers. It was wrong, however, to hire some of Canada’s staunchest advocates of the weapons to do the work.

Postscript: Since the foregoing was written on June 14, there have been six more deaths in North America, including one in Surrey, BC and another in Beamsville, ON.

According to statistics compiled by Robert Anglen of the Arizona Republic newspaper, at least 126 North Americans have died since September 1999 after being shocked by Tasers. Ten of those deaths have occurred in Canada, where, as far as we can tell, there has been no independent scientific analysis of the safety of the weapons, which use 50,000 volts of electricity to incapacitate the central nervous system.

Unless action is taken to curb Taser use, deaths will continue to occur at an alarming rate; there have been 31 so far this year, including four in the first two weeks of June. The most recent was Michael Anthony Edwards, 32 of Palatka, Florida, who died June 13, 2005.

The Canadian deaths:

April 19, 2003: Terrance Hanna, 51, Burnaby, B.C.

July 22, 2003: Clay Willey, 33, Prince George, B.C.

Sept. 28, 2003: Clark Whitehouse, 34, Whitehorse, Yukon

March 23, 2004: Perry Ronald, 28, Edmonton, Alta.

May 1, 2004: Roman Andreichik, Vancouver, B.C.

May 13, 2004: Peter Lamonday, 38, London, Ont.

June 23, 2004: Robert Bagnell, 44, Vancouver, B.C.

July 17, 2004: Jerry Knight, 29, Mississauga, Ont.

Aug. 8, 2004: Samuel Truscott, 43, Kingston, Ont.

May 5, 2005: Kevin Geldart, 34, Moncton, N.B.