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Anti-vaxxers who sued to block Boston indoor vaccination requirement claim they were damaged to the tune of at least $6 million apiece

Update: Case dismissed.

A group of anti-vaxxers who sued to try to block a Boston indoor vaccine mandate aren't letting the end of the requirement stop them: They've filed an amended complaint that now seeks $6 million for each of them for alleged harm the rule did them.

The 16 people - up from 14 in the original complaint - are still also asking for a ruling in US District Court in Boston that the Boston Public Health Commission is unconstitutional and should be dissolved and that the state law that lets local boards of health issue emergency pandemic regulations is equally an affront to the Constitution and should be tossed on the dung heap of history.

Shana Cottone, a Norfolk resident and Boston Police sergeant who also leads another group that likes to spend its mornings yelling outside Mayor Wu's house, remains the lead plaintiff in the case. The amended complaint was filed in US District Court in Boston today by Richard Chambers, a Lynnfield lawyer being funded by Make Americans Free Again, a group founded by Pam Popper, a naturopath fighting what others might call "science" but which she calls a "Covid Political Propaganda Plandemic."

Cottone alleges she was discriminated against because the vaccinations are against her religious beliefs and that, as a diabetic, the law put her at risk when she led a protest march against the then active vaccination requirement on Jan. 15 and was not allowed to eat at two pizza places along the route. She says she is now on the verge of losing her BPD job because the department has launched an investigation into whether her conduct at one of the pizza places - which she refused to leave even after workers called 911 and on-duty officers responded - is conduct unbecoming an officer and trespassing. Cottone, who had already been suspended from her job for other reasons before the incident, alleges she continues to suffer "embarrassment, humiliation and mental anguish."

The other unvaccinated plaintiffs also charge they suffered various forms of humiliation and mental anguish and, in some cases, monetary damages, because of the way they claimed the emergency order, enacted as omicron surged, made them pariahs.

One charges she and her husband had to leave Dorchester for the suburbs for their weekly "night out" because their refusal to get shots meant their local restaurants would bar them. Another says she had to drop out of outings to local indoor places with family and friends, making her feel "isolated from participating in events and social gatherings in public, causing her fear and anxiety."

Another plaintiff is a Mass General employee who lost her job after refusing the hospital's own vaccination mandate - and who is already part of another suit by Mass General Brigham employees over the hospital mandate, which she now says is also the city's fault, even though the hospital required its workers to get shots by Nov. 5, six weeks before Mayor Wu announced the city vaccination requirement and nearly two months before it went into effect.

Other plaintiffs include a mother who says she could not take her daughter to the Franklin Park Zoo; a musician barred from performing with his band one time because the establishment wanted proof of vaccination; a gym owner who claims he lost business; a hotel worker who claims she was fired for not getting a shot; a Lyft driver who says he lost business because he could not drive in Boston and had to limit his pickups to the less-passenger-dense suburbs; a Boston Public Library worker who not only doesn't want a shot but refused to even undergo Covid-19 testing; a businessman who had to "forego important meetings with clients in Boston;" and a home-schooler who couldn't bring her kids to any Boston museums and who felt "intimidated and embarrassed" when police showed up to make her leave a Regina Pizzeria for want of vaccination proof.

All of this horrible suffering warrants compensatory damages of $1 million each and punitive damages of $5 million each - in addition to outlawing the BPHC and ditching the ability of other local health agencies to enact emergency regulations, they say.

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Comments

Yup, good luck with that. I look forward to when the judge issues his ruling which shouldn't be to long after the city files a motion to dismiss

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TLDR;

A buncha whiney babies who are using religion and medical excuses to sue to get damages because they couldn't follow the business's rules.

Are you tired yet? I'm tired.

Some days I wonder if I had a case about wearing a shirt inside a store. I mean I could say i have a religion-based reason why I had to be shirtless inside Target.. I could sue? right?

I mean there's no real point to wearing a shirt inside target except to keep poor children from going blind from my fatness? right?

At least a mask there's some health reason to actual have the rule. No shirt? no real reason why to do it (shoes yes b/c its a hazard and health hazard (foot diseases)

I'm kidding folks but that is about where we're at with these people. Sometimes you just gotta suck it up (or suck it in, in my case) and put on a shirt or mask because the business says so.

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Some days I wonder if I had a case about wearing a shirt inside a store. I mean I could say i have a religion-based reason why I had to be shirtless inside Target.. I could sue? right?

For a more real world example, look at France's hijab ban. Better yet, Boston's proposed mask ban

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Isn't directly applicable to the American constitution.

The French constitution says:

La France est une République indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale. Elle assure l'égalité devant la loi de tous les citoyens sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion. Elle respecte toutes les croyances. Son organisation est décentralisée.

http://www.normandyvision.org/article12030701.php

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They weren't/aren't suing over masks, but over the requirement that people going into Boston restaurants, gyms, museums, etc., had to show proof of vaccination (I mean, same logic applies, but in the interests of accuracy ...).

Given that the city has since dropped, well, both requirements, it'll be interesting to see if a judge still finds that they have a case, given that their original suit was to block the mandate and that is now, as the lawyers might say, "moot." It'll also be interesting to see how they try to get around Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the still applicable 1905 Supreme Court case that gives governments the ability to enact emergency health regulations in a public-health crisis.

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If you don't stand for your right, you lose it. We are seeing that everyday....

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My religion says that everyone in Massachusetts has to send me $20 every Wednesday. All of you have been negligent. Watch for subpoenas.

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No worries. My religion specifies that I get to choose which dollar. With a population of about 7 million, a single Zimbabwean $100 Trillion bank note ought to cover all of us for quite some time. Where would you like it sent to?

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My religion says we shouldn't be honoring Woden with a day. I'll only accept demands for $20 every Mittwoch, or alternatively every Hump Day.

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The fact that so many people have not only refused to get vaccinated and/or to wear masks when in indoor settings, and make stupid-assed excuses for not doing so (i. e. bull-shit medical and/or religious exemptions), is beyond horrific. They endanger themselves, their friends, kids and family members, and neighbors, as well as endangering the general public The fact that so many people act and go on as normal, as if Covid-19 is just a "common cold" is beyond dangerous. Had the covid-19 vaccine been made mandatory like the polio, MMR, DTP, smallpox, and flu vaccines have been made, we'd be out of the woods, or at least close to it by now.

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The fact that so many people have not only refused to get vaccinated and/or to wear masks when in indoor settings, and make stupid-assed excuses for not doing so (i. e. bull-shit medical and/or religious exemptions), is beyond horrific. They endanger themselves, their friends, kids and family members, and neighbors, as well as endangering the general public The fact that so many people act and go on as normal, as if Covid-19 is just a "common cold" is beyond dangerous. Had the covid-19 vaccine been made mandatory like the polio, MMR, DTP, smallpox, and flu vaccines have been made, we'd be out of the woods, or at least close to it by now.

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These folks aren't very bright and now that the world has moved on from their clown show, funding has dried up and they're reduced to suing for imaginary damages. Fortunately for the defendant's lawyers, there are plenty of receipts, credit card transactions, emails, texts, social media messages, video content and eyewitness accounts that will dispel any notion of these clowns being harmed in any way.

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And you thought the state child-welfare worker who believes her body is God's temple sues state for trying to make her get Covid-19 shots was funny.

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Cottone alleges she was discriminated against because the vaccinations are against her religious beliefs and that, as a diabetic, the law put her at risk when she led a protest march against the then active vaccination requirement on Jan. 15 and was not allowed to eat at two pizza places along the route.

Let's just take a look at this one:

1. She's leading a protest against the indoor dining vaccine mandate, so she is indisputably aware that she will be denied entry to these establishments.

2. She's a diabetic, if she's going to lead a protest march, it would be irresponsible to not have the necessary supplies on hand for your known medical condition. Or, I don't know, find a convenience store along the way and get a granola bar or something? Who has to eat a slice of pizza during a march?

3. She's a diabetic, which puts her at increased risk of severe outcomes from a COVID-19 infection. She should probably consult her doctor about the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 given her medical condition.

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She just couldn't sit in the dining room as a possible risk to others. Same as how you can't drink a beer in a place that doesn't have a BOYB license.

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I hope she's denied communion, because she's got religious beliefs that aren't Catholic.

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I seem to remember some big wheel in the Catholic church saying Catholics should get the vaccine...South American guy name of Franklin or something.

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Forget the vaccine, fast food pizza isn't a great thing to be shoving into the body of a diabetic person either.

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Ha ha ha! Fast food and pizza aren't good for anybody....period!

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Sergeant Cottone was paid $160k in 2020. Not bad for someone who wouldn't be able to hold a job in a fast food job. In a fairer World we (tax payer suckers) would sue to recover the $millions we've wasted on her over the years.

https://www.wokewindows.org/officers/106714-shana-cottone

https://wokewindows-data.s3.amazonaws.com/personnel_orders/Personnel%20O...

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American cops are the most overpaid people in the world and it’s not even debatable.

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you know you are the reason they get paid so much right?

Thank you!

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Not sure the relationship there, but maybe it would help if it was instead tied somehow to their actual performance or the work they do?

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In another thread about battery powered lawn equipment, Kino thought people should be using axes for yard work, not battery powered equipment. Yea you read that right. So right off the bat we know Humans like Kino can’t survive on their own and need real special government regulations to basically stay alive. Cops are just one very small part of this world Kino exists in that keep him alive. Imagine Kino in Soviet Russia or even some Anarchro-Capitalist society like Will Latullipe wants? In Russia he is in one of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Wards and in Will’s world he simply starves and dies.

Again, government employees are always going to make a lot of money in societies where Kinopio type people live.

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In Russia he is in one of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Wards and in Will’s world he simply starves and dies.

But in this world he has no such worries, because he's living rent free in your head.

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Your policing of the internet and its commenters is top notch. And speaking of heads, it looks like I'm still in yours!

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...since your perpetual line is "I know you are, but what am I?"

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Never mind deleted. I had nothing nice to say in that post so there is no need to post it.

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There’s not a lot to do in Western MA, but he ‘works’ in Boston. Buhaha!

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Maybe Kinopio would appreciate the same consideration. I know he says some pretty provocative things, but...you really went after him.

And I'll try to do better as well in the future.

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Swearing off of fascism might help you deal with that.

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In some cases, yes. Don't go overboard and say all cops are overpaid.

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Maybe Sharon Cottone is feeling embarrassed and humiliated because she's behaving like an insecure child who only gets attention when having a tantrum.

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Somebody help me out with this. Do these people have the most absurd, outsized sense of entitlement of anyone on the planet, or are they just a bunch of cheap chiseling little grifters out to make a buck? Certainly it could be both and they could be related: if my sense of entitlement kept me from getting with the program, any program, I imagine it would be hard to hold down a job, or run an honest business. So, grift!

There are definitely rules that should be challenged. But when the essence of your complaint is "I am harmed by not being able to do x", when x="thing that no one else can do either, and that may be harmful to others", when businesses offer you alternatives in the form of takeout and curbside shopping, and when no one ever died for refraining on a temporary basis from their "weekly night out" or their "outings to local indoor places", you are merely being selfish.

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they’ve won time and time again by stopping every single covid mitigation effort from the start.

they won’t stop until the opposition is utterly destroyed – which is not unlike us, the progressives.

the difference is that for progressives, the enemy is an unjust system. for people like Cottone, the enemy is anyone who would attempt to dismantle that system.

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These lawsuits as akin to playing high prize slots at a casino. The chance of winning is extremely low but not zero. These people lose nothing by "playing" the legal system since the suites are being financed by outside groups for political reasons. An in some cases, they get suspended with pay while the case progresses.

Worse case for them, they loose their jobs they didn't want anyway and are still see as a "hero" to likeminded nutjobs.

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Be in a pointless convoy making circles around DC?

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Six million dollars used to purchase a superhuman cyborg. Now it will only pay for a single petulant wing nut?

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maybe they have very specific plans for their proposed payouts..

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Their odds would be better.

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So, can I sue these people for endangering me, and every other immune-compromised person the vaccines don't work well for, and the children too young to be vaccinated?

Yes, I'm wearing an N95 mask if I even might set foot in a building I don't live in, but I really do resent the people who are doing their best to increase the amount of potentially deadly virus in the air.

Never mind dining in restaurants, some of us are trying to figure out whether it's safe to go to the dentist, since dental cleanings really can't be done masked.

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Why are they not disbarring lawyers who bring these ridiculous pointless lawsuits?

I mean, even Supreme Court Justice OfTrump has been shooting this shit down on centuries of precedent. Why do these precious moments sanitarywipes think its going to be different for them (other than because of their inherent specialness)?

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A large percentage of the lawyer industry's profit is generated by ridiculous pointless lawsuits. The people who would be doing the disbarring are lawyers. They're not going to shrink that revenue stream.

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I mean, this should probably be tossed, but if you are proposing disbarring lawyers for bringing lawsuits, I'm sure I could point to several landmark civil rights cases where there would have been people who would be happy if the lawyers who filed them were disbarred.

The courts are a tool of the "rule of law." Let's not decide to close off access to people who we disagree with.

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I'm guessing that there are several objective and pretty straightforward criteria, such as not having standing, or basing one's case on spurious and discredited "precedent", that would weed out a lot of these. But IANAL.

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There are several reason why this case might get tossed, but the lawyer shouldn't be barred from practicing just because he filed it.

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Again, IANAL, and I have no idea what state bar standards are or anything. But if this is someone who does this all the time?

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They keep getting shot down repeatedly using the same precedents.

That is what makes them pointless, frivolous and a massive waste of time.

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Maybe if more lawyers had the good, common sense to refute and rebuff these absolutely asinine lawsuits that these anti-vaccine people are filing, we'd be out of the woods and back to normal, or at least close to it, by now.

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