Canadian Court Overturns Grounding

This is how sickly litigious we've become. Now in Canada a father can't even ground his 12-year-old daughter without being hauled into court. Just Ridiculous.

The girl used a court-appointed lawyer. Naturally.

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

The father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl's "own protection" and is appealing the ruling.

"She's a child," Beaudoin told AFP. "At her age, children test their limits and it's up to their parents to set boundaries."

"I started an appeal of the decision today to reestablish parental authority, and to ensure that this case doesn't set a precedent," she said. Otherwise, said Beaudoin, "parents are going to be walking on egg shells from now on."

Allahpundit links and adds this:

There has to be more to this than what’s here. The fact that the decision was made in the context of a custody dispute makes me think maybe the girl’s mother disagreed with the father about the punishment and consented to let the girl ask the judge to decide between them. A cursory googling reveals precious little information, though, aside from this report from Canwest, in which the father’s lawyer is quoted as lamenting the fact that this wasn’t settled the way parent/child disputes are supposed to be settled — in “youth court.”