A Washington restaurant is on the hook for nearly $1 million in fines for violating the indoor dining ban that was in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An appeals court ruled on August 12 that Stuffy’s II Restaurant in Longview caused significant harm by ignoring the rule and exposing staff to the virus.
The owners owe $936,000 in fines — $18,000 for each of the 52 days they were open.
According to the filing, the owners submitted tax returns indicating that they operated at a loss in 2020.
The court, however, felt that information alone was insufficient to determine whether they could pay the fines.
“A fine is not necessarily excessive because a corporation is unable to pay it,” the ruling states.
The court says that the restaurant owners failed to prove that the fine amount was excessive. --->READ MORE HERE
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The B.C. Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal from a doctor who was fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.
Dr. Theresa Szezepaniak was appealing a 2023 decision from the B.C. Hospital Appeal Board (HAB), which largely upheld the Interior Health authority's decision to suspend her hospitalist privileges at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, B.C.
The appeal board had ruled that Szezepaniak's refusal of the shot in 2021 amounted to neglect of her obligations as a hospitalist.
Szezepaniak, who had to sell her home and move to a different town to find work after the decision, said that her Charter rights were breached by the HAB decision and asked a Supreme Court justice to set it aside.
However, Justice Steven Wilson said the Charter did not apply to Interior Health's decision to suspend Szezepaniak's privileges, as it was an operational decision and not one that was directly controlled by government.
"I do not accept that a hospital board's ability to exclude a practitioner from the hospital for failing to comply with the [bylaws] is a decision that is governmental in nature," his decision, published Thursday, read.
Szezepaniak had argued that the HAB was upholding discipline based on government legislation, in which case her Charter-protected rights to life, liberty and security of the person — and specifically her right to earn an income to support her family — would have been breached.
But the court disagreed, and said that even if the Charter were to apply to the HAB's decision, Szezepaniak's rights were not breached in this instance.
That was because, the court noted, the Charter does not protect the right to work in a particular job or position, and Szezepaniak's firing was a result of her decision to not get vaccinated. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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