More Canadian Justice

Dad grounds daughter, but court ungrounds her

The father had ordered the daughter, who was not identified by the report, to remain off the Internet. She didn't, chatting on websites her father had tried to block and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online, using a friend's Internet portal.

As punishment, the father refused to let her go on a scheduled school trip, so the 12-year-old went to Canada's judicial system to get her way.

Court records indicated the violation of her home's Internet rules was just one in a list of instructions that she had violated. But Justice Suzanne Tessier said the punishment was just too much.

Not going on a school trip is too much punishment? What does the court think would be appropriate? A verbal reprimand, perhaps? But then, the daughter might consider that hate speech.

Obviously, the appropriate thing for the judge to do would have been to throw the case out and make the daughter do community service to pay for the courts time, in addition to not going on the school trip.