by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

I was recently in Vancouver and it has changed remarkably from the first time I saw it in my youth. It looks and feels like many large skyscraped American cities, only cleaner. The convention center where I spent some of my time is right on the water with spectacular views. With credit cards, you don’t need to carry a wad of Canadian currency, nor struggle with exchange-rate math. There were a couple of quirks, however.

I booked my flight on Delta out of John Wayne as it offered direct flights without long layovers in Seattle. When I tried to get a seat assignment, the idea of one-click booking went south in a hurry. It seems the flight I had selected (which had a Delta flight number) was actually on a plane owned by WestJet, a Canadian carrier. WestJet’s flight number was, of course, different than Delta’s. Delta electronically told me that I had to contact WestJet for my seat assignments. As you might guess, WestJet, in turn, electronically told me that I had to get the seats from Delta. I finally, with some extra cost and considerable on-hold time, obtained seats from WestJet, but it was not without human intervention.

Canadian companies have also adopted our ubiquitous and thoroughly irritating electronic phone systems, seemingly designed to prevent any human contact by requiring the caller to run a gauntlet of digital choices, none of which seems the least bit relevant to the problem at hand, before hitting pay dirt.

Starting with: “Press un for français.”

No matter where you go, or what you do, language is important.

Even in Miami.

One Jean Noel, whose name certainly sounds French, sued something called SDH Services West and Healthcare Corporation of America in federal district court which, standing alone, would be unremarkable. However, Mr. Noel’s use of what my late father called “the King’s English” was anything but unremarkable.

Mr. Noel was employed as a housekeeper by “Defendant SDH in which the Company contracted by Defendant Hospital, in which the assignments and control of Plaintiff’s employment came from Defendant Hospital.”

In his Proposed Second Amended Complaint, he accused the hospital of an “unwelcome race failure to promote,” the effect of which “adversely affect her status as employees because of her race.” This despite the fact that the first line of the complaint identified Noel as “Mr. Noel.”

The hospital also (and I think the word “allegedly” goes without saying) “took retaliatory actions against [him] . . . by accusing him of discipline of his actions that Plaintiff undressed himself at Defendant Hospital in front of Defendant Hospital patient [singular] and was accused of having sexual intercourse with patients [plural] that were not supported by the facts . . . .” (I hate it when patients are not supported by the facts, but I digress.)

As a result, “Plaintiff were harmed . . . .”

By the time of the Proposed Second Amended Complaint, the court had enough of Mr. (or Ms.) Noel (or Noels). In its Order, the court noted that the proposed pleading, not unlike the two predecessors, was “replete with grammatical errors, including improper punctuation, misspelling of words, incorrect conjugation of verbs, and lack of apostrophes when required for possessive adjectives; sentence fragments; and nonsensical sentences.”

The court additionally complained, “The proposed Second Amended Complaint is also an eyesore, with its formatting errors and spaces.”

The sequence is worth noting. After the defendants had filed a motion to dismiss the first amended complaint, the plaintiff filed an unopposed motion to file a second amended complaint, which the court effectively denied by granting the motion to dismiss the first amended complaint. The court’s remedy was unique:

Plaintiff’s counsel is permitted to file a second amended complaint as a separate docket entry . . . so long as he certifies the pleading has been reviewed and approved by a teacher of the English language—such certification is to be included in the notice of filing the second amended complaint. Should these issues persist in Plaintiff’s filings, Plaintiff’s counsel will be referred to the Florida Bar for counselling and any other action the Florida Bar deems appropriate.

Four days later, the plaintiff dismissed, which shows how much my job is a learning experience.

I always thought that if you couldn’t conjugate, you sought a medical specialist, not an English teacher.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is Of Counsel with the firm of Friedman Stroffe & Gerard in Irvine. He can be reached at rmillar@fsglawyers.com.