Healthcare workers fined $190,000 for challenging vaccine mandate, U. California case continues

COVID-19 vaccine mandate litigation took opposite turns in American and Canadian courts this month, with class-action plaintiffs moving toward trial against the University of California System while fired Ontario healthcare workers were fined $190,000 for just bringing suit.

American vaccine-injury victims are also putting current and former feds on notice they can't escape legal liability for alleged censorship-by-proxy just because the Biden administration is ending, getting help from a federal judge to serve one who couldn't be found in person.

The California Supreme Court denied a petition for review of lower court rulings that prevented UC employees from arguing the jab-or-job mandates violated the Nuremberg Code on informed consent in medical experimentation, which is incorporated into California law.

The plaintiffs accuse the system of using "unapproved modified gene Covid-19 injections without full and free informed consent and for withholding medical care to those injured by its system-wide mandatory injection program."

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Michael Markman "erroneously narrowed the scope of peremptory minimum standards for human experimentation to the worst of Nazi war crimes" and used ellipses to hide their claims, including "coercive influence" to drive jabs and nondisclosure of "expected negative efficacy and risks of serious harm," the petition said.

The judge also falsely said the vaccines, which remained under emergency use authorization at the time, were "FDA-approved" and hence not experimental, they said.

The other five claims are going forward, however, lawyer Warner Mendenhall confirmed to Just the News on Thursday, including their crucial California privacy claims. 

The plaintiffs are deep in legal discovery, and the next big hearing is in May to consider class certification for all UC employees subject to mandates, he said, at which point legal costs could balloon. UC's most recent employee headcount from April shows 265,000.

Lead plaintiff Christopher Rake, who went viral for livestreaming his removal from his UCLA hospital for remaining unvaccinated on scientific grounds, started a GiveSendGo legal fundraiser that aims to raise $1 million but has not hit $3,500 as of Thursday.

"Based on public health data from around the world (Scotland, Canada, UK, Israel, etc), we believe that the UC knew that the injections" actually raised COVID infection, hospitalization, severe adverse event and death rates, and the plaintiffs believe they can prove that through access to the system's "extensive and rich database," Rake wrote.

Nearly 500 Ontario, Canada, healthcare workers got far worse news in a Dec. 18 ruling by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which accused their lawyer Rocco Galati of bringing baseless litigation when his "similarly drafted statements of claim" against COVID vaccine mandates had already been rejected by British Columbia and federal trial and appeals courts.

They had alleged the mandates violated their Charter rights, legislation and international treaties, including the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Act and Genetic Non-Discrimination Act for COVID testing and the Nuremberg Code for "medical experimentation" via vaccines.

Judge Markus Koehnen wrote that he had no jurisdiction over unionized employees, about 80% of the plaintiffs, saying that arbitrators can issue the Charter declaration they seek.

"The fundamental issue" against the healthcare defendants "is whether they had the right to suspend or terminate" those workers, which "go[es] to the very heart of the employment relationship and the collective agreement," unlike a workplace sexual assault, he wrote.

The Ministry of Health's "Directive 6," which lasted just six months, only required healthcare entities to "develop and implement" COVID vaccination policies but not "set out consequences for refusing to be vaccinated," Koehnen wrote.

The judge found "prejudicial scope of the action" because the suit would "allow what are effectively 473 individual actions to proceed as one claim," and 78 claims even if he removed the unionized employees and healthcare professionals. 

That means Koehnen might have to consider each worker's reason for refusing vaccination, grounds for their sought exemptions, each employer's response and "context, content, and manner in which" policies were implemented in "institutions of widely varying size and scope" and different locations. 

"A policy and a decision to suspend or terminate may make sense in one context but not in another," Koehnen wrote, citing one defendant with four different COVID policies.

The suit "seems intended to "mount a political crusade in which the court will be used as a grandstand to conduct an inquiry" into the effectiveness of vaccines and the government's response to COVID, he wrote.

"Had Ontario taken steps that were fundamentally out of line with what other jurisdictions around the world were doing, the plaintiffs might have a more credible argument," but because the province "reflected a mainstream of scientific thought," the suit "does seem frivolous and vexatious" in its focus on "fraudulent testing" and crimes against humanity, the judge said.

"It strains all credulity" to accept that Premier Doug Ford, cabinet ministers and healthcare entities "somehow conspired to concoct a plan to declare a 'false pandemic' all for the predominant purpose of harming the plaintiffs," Koehnen wrote.

He awarded the 54 non-governmental defendants $175,000, down from the roughly $236,000 they sought, and $15,000 to the governmental defendants. The plaintiffs asked their potential liability be capped at $47,462, "which reflects their own partial indemnity costs."

COVID vaccine-injury victims sued Biden administration officials last year for "threats, pressure, inducement, and coercion" to censor their social media groups for vaccine injuries and prevent them from raising money. 

A few tell their stories in a new video by their lawyers at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which alleges "to this day they have to use code words even on private online support groups to avoid posts being flagged as false, as being removed entirely."

The parties filed a Dec. 4 joint status report that makes an intriguing disclosure: Former White House Deputy Assistant Rob Flaherty, whose sometimes-profane marching orders to tech platforms were highlighted in Supreme Court oral argument in a broader social media censorship lawsuit, may be "avoiding service" of legal papers.

When plaintiffs Brianne Dressen, Shaun Barcavage, Kristi Dobbs, Nikki Holland, Suzanna Newell and Ernest Ramirez – whose son died of vaccine complications – filed an amended suit in September detailing "how the illegal scheme has continued" since the suit was filed, they added claims against Flaherty and other officials in their individual capacities.

That meant each needed to be notified and given time to find adequate representation in their individual capacities.

NCLA's process server tried four times to serve Flaherty – whose "last-known employment" was deputy campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign – at his last-known residence in D.C., and a "stakeout … could cost thousands of dollars," according to the firm's Nov. 23 motion for "alternative service" to Flaherty. 

The court approved the motion and NCLA Dec. 12 showed the court the USPS notification it received that Flaherty's notice had been delivered Nov. 27. 

The Dec. 4 report said Flaherty was the only defendant with unknown counsel, and the docket as of Thursday does not show he has one yet. 

Flaherty's only recent public communication that Just the News could find is a LinkedIn post asking potential employers to reach out to Harris campaign staff through an online form. Just the News filled out the form asking for Flaherty but has not heard back.