A Windsor, Ont., man lost out on a $341,775 court judgment yesterday, when the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that a bottling company should not have been held liable for triggering a phobia of flies that altered his personality and killed his sex life.
Waddah Mustapha -- a Lebanese immigrant with a mania for cleanliness -- had won the award in 2005 after persuading a judge that a water-bottling company ought to pay dearly for delivering him a water bottle with a dead fly floating near the top.
Soon after the incident, Mr. Mustapha, 46, began to suffer serious psychiatric symptoms - a major depressive disorder with associated phobia and anxiety.
He became edgy, argumentative, depressed, couldn't sleep and refused to even drink coffee because it contained water.
Overturning the award in a 3-0 ruling, the Court of Appeal said the outcome of the fly incident was so bizarre that it couldn't have been reasonably foreseen by the company, Culligan of Canada Ltd.
It said that neither Mr. Mustapha nor his family came close to suffering a foreseeable physical injury: "Nobody drank anything from the bottle. It remained sealed. There can be no physical harm from seeing a dead fly in a bottle of water."
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