STORY: ""Mom who lost custody launches lawsuit against Motherisk lab Yvonne Marchand, who claims she lost her daughter over a false hair test, hopes to start a class action against the Sick Kids lab," by reporter Jacques Gallant, published by the Toronto Star on January 22, 2016.
GIST: "A Scarborough woman who claims she lost custody of her only child because of erroneous hair test results from the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk laboratory is suing the hospital and the lab's former director and manager in what could become a massive class-action lawsuit. Among other requests, a statement of claim filed in Superior Court this week by lawyers for Yvonne Marchand, 33, seeks a court order certifying the lawsuit as a class action and a declaration that the defendants were negligent in operating and supervising the Motherisk lab. “For years, I would just cry and tell anybody who would listen that I was a good mom and that I love my little girl so much, but people just think you’re crazy,” Marchand told the Star, reflecting on her life before recent revelations about the lab tests. “Now at least the truth comes out. I wasn’t just making things up.”
Marchand underwent hair testing by Motherisk
when the father of her 2-year-old daughter made false allegations of
alcohol abuse during a custody dispute and the Catholic Children’s Aid
Society of Toronto decided to investigate, she alleges in her statement
of claim. She claims the test produced a “false-positive
result,” meaning it showed she was abusing alcohol even though she
wasn’t. The statement says Marchand then went for an independent test
from an accredited lab, which concluded she was negative for alcohol
abuse. But the judge at her court proceeding, about
four years ago, refused to admit the independent test because the author
of the test wasn’t present, Marchand claims. The lab’s manager was in
court, but Marchand, who represented herself, didn’t know how to qualify
the manager as an expert in order to testify, according to the
statement of claim. She claims the judge then relied on the
Motherisk test result to strip her of custody of her daughter, whom she
said she now sees only six hours a week. None of the allegations in Marchand’s statement of claim has been proven in court. “I thought with the negative test she would be
coming home,” Marchand told the Star, becoming emotional over the
phone. “I was just sobbing in court. There’s nothing I could say. He’s
the judge.”.........Among the allegations in the lawsuit, which
could become a $450-million class-action, is that, prior to 2010,
Motherisk relied on a testing methodology that was not considered the
“gold standard.” That methodology was the focus of a Star investigation
that led to the independent review and the commission that is now
reviewing old cases. The statement of claim also alleges the lab
lacked standard operating procedures, lacked oversight, failed to
routinely wash hair samples before testing, and practised poor
record-keeping. “The disruption and removal of children from
parents is unfathomable,” said one of Marchand’s lawyers, Rob Gain, “and
has a dramatic effect that no amount of money will be able to make
these families whole again.”"
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/01/22/mom-who-lost-custody-launches-lawsuit-against-motherisk-lab.html
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http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/01/22/mom-who-lost-custody-launches-lawsuit-against-motherisk-lab.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
