Man meets God on Ketamine, receives $63,000 in damages for the "mishap."

[mouthwater]

Damages set at $63,000 in drug mishap
Campbell River man says he saw God after accidental overdose
Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, April 12, 2007

VANCOUVER - A Campbell River man has received $63,000 in damages for an "out-of-body experience" in which he said he saw God after being accidentally overdosed with the painkiller Ketamine while recovering from back surgery in Vancouver General Hospital.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Frank Cole made the award to former social worker Bradley Weafer, 38, but rejected Weafer's claim that he had suffered significant brain damage as a result of the overdose, which occurred Aug. 11, 2001.

Cole found that Weafer suffered psychological trauma from the overdose, in which he received the entire contents of a 500-milligram bag of Ketamine -- being administered intravenously -- over a five-minute period. He was supposed to have received three millilitres an hour for 24 hours.

The overdose caused him to lose consciousness and he needed to be resuscitated. He later told his parents he'd had a terrifying out-of-body experience, which medical evidence indicated was one of the side-effects of a Ketamine overdose.

He initially claimed to have suffered a heart attack as a result of the overdose, but this claim wasn't pursued at trial.

Cole found that Weafer had experienced poor health before the Ketamine incident.

The judge rejected claims that chest pains Weafer says he suffered were from CPR being performed on him and that the pain "insofar as it exists" was not caused by the incident.

Witnesses said Weafer was talking like a child when they visited him in hospital and he said he has experienced speech problems since the overdose. However, Cole dismissed that claim and said if Weafer has any speech problems, "they do not appear to impair his life."

Weafer told the court that before the overdose, he remembered being hooked up to medication and falling asleep.

"He said his life changed," Cole wrote in his reasons for judgment.

"He said: 'I was sucked down into black tunnels where I've never been before. People pulling me around by my feet, all black, was hot, scary, saw life flash in front of me. I saw my mother, felt being born and placed in my mother's arms, life review of all the good and bad . . . then I shot up through the sky surrounded like a shower of white light, went straight through the clouds and saw this figure to the right and he had a white cap on, look at his face and he wouldn't let me see his face. It was a bright white light. He was an office-tower high, larger than any building I'd ever seen.'"

Weafer then described seeing a gathering of people waiting for him on the other side of a trellis -- further journeys down into blackness and back into light --until he woke up and found doctors asking him questions.

He told them, "I just saw God and was fighting for my life."

In dismissing Weafer's claims of brain damage, Cole nevertheless said the man "suffered a great degree of stress and anxiety due to the Ketamine incident. The near-death experience was terrifying."

He awarded Weafer $55,000 in damages, $5,000 for the expenses of his parents looking after him and $3,000 in special damages.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	fun and interesting, SWIM loves funny news
	good find

[Nagognog2]

Cool! Now I can go to church and then sue them! What a legal precedent!

[Alfa]

Can you sue a church?

[Nagognog2]

I think we'll find out pretty soon. This sets a fantastic legal precedent. Or this case above will be reversed. Something! Wow!

[baudmax]

Question is, can you sue a church that can't show you the way to god? No god here.... nope not there either? Maybe they hide him in the back room...? Ah, not to worry, stuff more money in that thar box, say 100 Hail Mary's.. and see if THAT does the trick...

And now onto my next trick.. pulling G-O-D out of a hat... Presto!

Peace and Divinity
Love is the Law

Baudeaux Machs

Reputation Comments on this post:

Excellent question and one that should be the basis for every law student on the planet.

[fnord]

Originally Posted by baudmax

Question is, can you sue a church that can't show you the way to god? No god here.... nope not there either? Maybe they hide him in the back room...?

swims niece once went into a church with her mother and looked around and whispered "mom?wheres jesus at?"i think we just found are first test case...

[baudmax]

Originally Posted by fnord

swims niece once went into a church with her mother and looked around and whispered "mom?wheres jesus at?"i think we just found are first test case...

I have a hunch she's just the tip of the iceberg! One would think there's more than enough victims of this worst kind of fraud, to seriously warrant a class action lawsuit.

Peace and Divinity
Love is the Law

Baudeaux Machs

[x cynic x]

Its funny to see how they handled the situation. The guy was probably freaking out, never having experienced such a profound sensation, so the court throws an enormous amount of money at his face. So many are unaware of the potential of ketamine.

[podge]

63,000 for recieving a monster k-hole dose......JACKPOT .

[csharpprogrammer]

The guy probably had a lot of fun, and just thought he could get money out of it too.

[LookingForHer]

"Damages set at $63,000 in drug mishap"

wow. Maybe he wanted it to buy more K?

Seriously though... if he wants 63,000$ because he saw God... how the hell do you think he'll handle it when he really meets God? MORON. Who do you think you'll have to sue then?

[Nacumen]

While I don't necessarily agree or disagree with damages being awarded in such occasions, I want to remind you all that tripping could be completely horrifying and psychologically traumatic to someone who doesn't know that they're just tripping, let alone approaching overdose levels. If this happened to you, you would probably be scared too, because you wouldn't know how much of what you were being given.

[Beltane]

Man, SWIM could buy SO much K for $63,000!

- Beltane

[snapper]

SWIM can vouch for for the potential of NMDA antagonist overdoses to be terrifying, esp if someone never chose to alter their consciousness in the first place. SWIM remembers as a youth smoking weed laced with PCP. SWIM did not enjoy that experience at all - in fact, it ranks amongst the most terrifying experiences SWIM can recall, and SWIM had used a lot of hallucinogenics and a fair share of dissociatives since. It was the fact that the experience was so overwhelming and SWIM was not expecting it and did not know what was going on that made it so difficult to reconcile. SWIM can see that as being a major trauma for some....

[JumpinJackFlash]

Yeah it's alot worse when you don't expect it, that's why you should never snort lines people leave around, it never turns out to be coke funnily enough. I love americans, they sue when they have a religious experience now, this ranks up there with the women who sued because she burnt herself with a cup of coffee and claimed she didn't know it was hot (that's why they have those plastic lids on btw, she won)

[k-skywalker]

is overdose levels not supposed to be really far out for ketamine ? do they not mean just more than they would usually administer in that situation ...

[upperdecker]

Maybe he really did see God.

[enquirewithin]

Originally Posted by k-skywalker

is overdose levels not supposed to be really far out for ketamine ? do they not mean just more than they would usually administer in that situation ...

Not a life threatening overdose-- just too many "emergence reactions." Somebody owes SWIM a lot of money!