Ches Crosbie versus the Moose

It is Ches Crosbie versus the moose of Newfoundland.  Mr. Crosbie filed a class-action lawsuit earlier this year against the province of Newfoundland on behalf of two victims of moose-vehicle collisions.  He claimed that “the province negligently failed to manage a moose population that is a public nuisance” (CTV News).  The government was named as a defendant, according to The Globe and Mail, because “it brought moose to the island a century ago as a source of meat” and “controls the moose population through the issuing of hunting tags”.  Mr. Crosbie estimated that there are “about 700 moose-vehicle collisions annually and perhaps two or three deaths” caused by moose weighing up to 1000 lbs.  Although Mr. Crosbie acknowledges that “when we launched this class action, most people in the province thought that we were a bit crazy”, an increase in the number of plaintiffs and Justice Richard LeBlanc’s recent support of certification of the case means that he is now involved in a “potentially precedent-setting class action” unlike any other in the country.
(The above appeared in a recent edition of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars Newsletter.  I reprint it for fun.)