AUDIO: WOMAN DIDN’T HOLD ESCALATOR HANDRAIL, SUPREME COURT WILL DECIDE CASE
The Supreme Court of Canada agreed Thursday to hear the case of a woman who was ticketed and arrested after she refused instructions to hold onto an escalator handrail. Bela Kosoian was in a Montreal subway station in 2009 when a police officer told her to respect a pictogram with the instruction, “Hold the handrail.” She refused to hold the handrail, and tensions mounted after she also refused to identify herself. She was “taken by force” by the officer and another who had arrived as backup. The officers detained Kosoian for about 30 minutes before letting her go with two tickets – one for $100 for disobeying a pictogram and another for $320 for obstructing an inspector. She was acquitted of the two infractions in court in 2012, and then subsequently filed a $45,000 lawsuit against the Montreal Transit Corporation. Her suit was rejected by Quebec court in 2015 and by the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2017. She appealed again, and it will now be up to the country’s high court to settle the matter.
* On the surface, this sounds like a frivolous case, but once you get down to the constitutional underpinnings, it’s really a frivolous case.
* What if there’s something icky on the handrail?
* Just to rub it in, when the officers released her, she ran away holding scissors.
* It’s the country’s highest court. She’s gonna need an escalator to get there.
CLIP: A bit of Five Man Electrical Band’s song “Signs”.
