OTTAWA — A Canadian hairdresser learned the hard way that a steady sex drive isn’t guaranteed, even during the supposedly sexual imagery saturated 21st Century – but the country’s Supreme Court has refused to blame a drinking water company for the man’s problem. Waddah Mustapha insists that he was sound in mind and body until the fateful day in 2001 when he and his wife found two dead flies in a jug of drinking water he’d installed in his home dispenser but not yet tapped. According to Mustapha, who admits to an obsession with cleanliness and a loathing for insects, he hasn’t been the same since.
In addition to now being plagued by depression, phobias, and anxiety – Mustapha insists that his sex life has become a nightmare of non-existent proportions. Ever since seeing the tragic insect duo, he says he’s not only developed an intense phobia to water, but has also lost all interest in sex, finding it difficult to even be alone in the shower with water and his own nudity.
In an attempt to bring money, if not passion, into his life, Mustapha sued Culligan of Canada and managed to earn $434,000 in negligence damages for his efforts.
When the case somehow made it to the Supreme Court, however, his financial luck began to match his sexual luck.
In spite of assurances that Mustapha had vomited upon finding the deceased flies in his beverage and began suffering “debilitating psychological injury” that includes visions of flies walking over feces and rotten food, as a result of the visual trauma, the Court was unanimous in its belief that he had not proven that his woes resulted from the accused bottle of water.
“Mr. Mustapha must show that it was foreseeable that a person of ordinary fortitude would suffer serious injuries from seeing the flies in the bottle of water he was about to install. This he failed to do,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the 9-0 ruling. “Unusual or extreme reactions to events caused by negligence are imaginable, but not reasonably foreseeable.”
Additionally, the Court ordered Mustapha’s previously awarded payment rescinded and held him liable for court costs.
Unsurprisingly, Mustapha is frustrated.
“I simply don’t believe justice has been served,” he informed the Montreal Gazette. “this discriminates against people who are less robust in fortitude.”
Mustapha estimates that he’s run up $500,000 in therapy and legal bills since his belief in the purity of bottled water was destroyed.
