B.C. judge throws out sasquatch lawsuit

VANCOUVER — A British Columbia court has thrown out a lawsuit that claimed the provincial government has committed a “dereliction of duty” by failing to protect the sasquatch as a threatened or endangered species.

Todd Standing, who describes himself as a wildlife expert and film maker who has spent years studying the sasquatch, launched the suit in January.

He claimed officials within the B.C. fish and wildlife branch don’t acknowledge the existence of sasquatch and infringed on his rights as they relate to his concerns regarding the “primate, also known as bigfoot.”

In response, the province called the lawsuit “frivolous,” “an abuse of process,” lacking “an air of reality,” and applied to have the case dismissed, saying Standing’s statements of fact are ultimately incapable of proof.

In his judgment posted online Tuesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Ball finds no issue with B.C.’s lack of sasquatch recognition, ruling that no duty was owed to Standing to support a view on the existence of any creature.

Ball finds none of Standing’s legal rights have been breached by the province and approves the application to reject the lawsuit, ruling the action has no reasonable prospect of success.

Standing had claimed B.C.’s position breached several of his charter rights, including the right to equal treatment regardless of personal characteristics, but Ball disagrees.

“A belief in the existence of the sasquatch is not an immutable personal characteristic,” Ball says in the eight page judgment.