Question

Typhoid Mary’s Pandemic The City of Covid, located in Corona County, in the province of Ontario, was having a contagion outbreak. A novel disease had been spreading around the world. Although the death rate was very low and was restricted to the elderly, this disease was very contagious and spread through aerosol contact. Which meant that the moisture that people exhale could carry this virus to anyone. The virus had been found to be potentially deadly to the elderly and people who suffered from untreated diabetes, lung conditions such as asthma or immune-compromised due to other medical treatment. The result was that, although most people would suffer only flu like symptoms, some people with family members who were over the age of 50, could bring the virus home and expose the vulnerable people to the disease. Under the provincial legislation, the Health Protection and Promotion Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.7, the government can establish regional Public Health Boards who have the jurisdiction to establish Public Health Standards and Practices to protect the public from many things, including contagious diseases. Because of this most recent novel virus outbreak, Corona County’s Public Health Board has established rules for the opening and closing of certain businesses, the daily practices of certain businesses, and the requirement that people can only gather in small groups of 10 or less and requires everyone to wear a mask or face protection of some kind when in public and in stores, schools and shopping malls. All businesses that have been allowed to remain open are required to post signs explaining the rules, post staff at the door to ensure compliance, and provide disinfecting stations and free masks to those who enter their premises. Everyone in Corona County is aware of the disease’s signs and symptoms and the high incidence of the disease in their county. The Public Health Board’s Rules are published everywhere in the county. The Public Health Board had shut down the town for weeks. Everyone was required to stay home, and most people were either working from home or unemployed, collecting a government subsidy (which actually worked out to be better than working for minimum wage.) Then they eased restrictions. Typhoid Mary woke up Monday with a fever and a cough. She remembered that she had been at a private party last weekend. It was a huge party with well over 100 people. Everyone was so tired of being cooped up at home so long that when they saw Ronny Rebel’s post on Instagram about a little bonfire he was having at his cottage, just outside Covid City, everyone wanted to go. Although the plan was to be outside with only 10 of his friends, it rained that night. So all 147 people who arrived were in the tiny cottage for the night. All of the expected activities took place as if there was no such thing as a pandemic. The few partiers who wore masks had them off within the first hour. Mary vaguely remembers that she spent a lot of time dancing with some very drunk people. The music was loud, and people were shouting just to hear each other. Because the government subsidy had been cancelled, Mary knew she had to go to work. Her rent was due, and she was overdrawn at her bank. She was stressed about money. She thought that maybe a coffee would make her feel better, so she went to her local coffee shop owned by her friend Sonny Survivor. Sonny had been willing to break the rules from the start. He was determined not to lose his business and life savings so he found ways to stay open using drive-up door service and Fluber Eats (a food delivery app.) He had a hand sanitizer station at the door, but he knew the bottle had been empty for days. He could not afford to refill it. And he thought in principle he should not have to supply everyone with hand sanitizer. Although he had the mask sign posted on the door, his employees all agreed that the government had gone too far to create the mask law so they never enforced the mask rule and many customers came in without one. Often customers would have their masks under their chin or under their nose because they knew Sonny and his employees would not say anything. While Mary stood in the line up for almost 5 minutes, she wore her mask a little while. Soon she was too hot, and she lowered it. Belligerent Bob was in line behind Mary the whole time with his mask down around his neck. Although he did not know her, he spoke loudly to Mary and everyone else in the place, a few times about crazy this whole mask thing was. He explained the conspiracy theories for everyone to hear. Mary smiled because she wasn’t sure, but she thought she recognized him from Ronny’s party. Bob got his coffee and headed off to his job as a janitor at the Weary Wrecks Retirement Home and Hospital. When Bob got to work, they did his daily health screening as required by the new rules. They would ask him about how he felt and if he had been at any large gatherings or had been travelling. Everyday he did this and everyday he said “No.” Everyone knew Bob had just come back from a three-week vacation in Italy. But he seemed fine and his boss, Haggard Hal, was having a hard time finding people who would work for minimum wage, so he really didn’t pay attention to the screening process. He was just happy people came to work. There were a lot of hand sanitizing stations in the Home and he supplied free masks, so he thought it was taken care of. Many family members of the residents complained about the masks and refused to wear them when they visited. When Mary got to work as a cashier at the Drug Store, she put on a fresh mask and went quickly past her boss Sue Scramble. Sue was trying to clean the cash stations and screen her employees at the same time. She was in a hurry and had to get the store opened on time. She had run out of her disinfecting spray but didn’t want to take any off the shelf for fear the owner would be mad. So, she just used water with a little bit of soap. She forgot to screen Mary. Mary served 112 people that day. Some wore masks and some didn’t. She shared the cash register with Vicky Victim. Vicky was a 62 year old woman who lived with her mother who suffered from an immune deficiency. But Vicky hated the smell of hand sanitizer and so she didn’t use it often. Mary did some shelf stocking when the store slowed down. Sue was just happy when people pitched in. When leaving work, Mary stopped at the grocery store because she thought she would benefit from some healthy soup. The store was crowded, and the owner, Greedy Gus was watching the door to keep the numbers under the 10 he was allowed to have in the store at once. He asked Mary what she was there for. She said just some soup. So, he let her in even though there were already 15 people in the store. Some refused to wear a mask. Gus didn’t fight them on it. Mary walked right by the hand sanitizing station and started picking up cans of soup to read ingredients because she was vegan. The next day Mary called in sick and told Sue she “might have been a little sick yesterday.” Sue had been having difficulties with the owner of the store, Tyrannical Tom. She was afraid he was going to fire her. She thought she might have had to tell him about the illness according to the Health rules, and he would have to tell the Public Health Office. But she told Mary to go get a test, and she decided to wait until that test came back before she told Tom. Mary felt better after a few days. Although she tested positive for the virus, she was young and rebounded well. She had to remain quarantined however, for another 10 days and she was bored again. So, she turned on the TV. The local news station was talking about an outbreak in her town. Four people had died at the retirement home. Another seven were sick. The police were looking for information about a big party at a cottage. The local drug store had been shut down. The Public Health had issued a statement that backward tracing had isolated a problematic grocery store and anyone who had been there was being told to get a test. People in the neighbourhood were talking about the days they were in the stores and were hearing about the backward tracing leading to the sick people who spread the disease. She got a text from her colleague Vicky saying her mother was taken to the hospital and was on a ventilator. Her friends messaged her saying that Sonny at the coffee shop was sick and he was closed down. Mary began to wonder…..

Template Questions for the Week 3 Case Study In the attached scenario there are many examples of negligence. We all know Mary was negligent, but there is no point in suing her because she has no money. So, like a good lawyer, focus on the other examples of negligence where you have someone worth suing. Do not use Mary’s negligence to answer these questions.

Describe in detail TWO (2) of the examples of Negligence in the above scenario. Use the following points/questions to guide your detailed description for each Tort: Pick two examples of negligence from the scenario. State them. Explain in detail the elements of negligence. Explain in detail the Facts from the scenario that give rise to negligence and satisfy each of the elements Explain in detail if there is any Defense or Contributory Negligence which could reduce the damages. Explain in detail the types of damages arising from the negligence and what they might be worth.

Answer 1

GEORGE SOPER WAS not your typical detective. He was a civil engineer by training, but had become something of an expert in sanitation. So when, in 1906, a landlord in Long Island was struggling to trace the source of a typhoid outbreak, Soper was called in. The landlord had rented his Long Island house to a banker’s family and servants that summer. By late August, six of the house’s 11 inhabitants had fallen ill with typhoid fever.

Soper had been previously hired by New York state to investigate disease outbreaks—“I was called an epidemic fighter,” he later wrote—and believed that typhoid could be spread by one person serving as a carrier. In Long Island, he focused his attention on the cook, Mary Mallon, who had arrived three weeks before the first person became ill.

Mary Mallon (foreground) didn't show symptoms of typhoid, but spread the disease while working as a cook in the New York City area. She is pictured after having been institutionalized in a hospital on North Brother Island, where she stayed for more than a quarter century.

What Soper discovered would demonstrate how an unwitting carrier could be the root of disease outbreaks, and, later, spark a debate about personal autonomy when it’s pitted against public health.

Combing through the roster of wealthy New Yorkers who had employed Mallon in their summer homes between 1900 and 1907 he found a trail of 22 infected people. Typhoid fever is a bacterial infection typically spread through food and water contaminated by salmonella. Patients fall ill with high fever, diarrhea—and, before antibiotics were developed to treat it, sometimes delirium and death.

At that time, without regulated sanitation practices in place, the disease was fairly common and New York had battled multiple outbreaks. In 1906, the year Soper began his investigation, a reported 639 people had died of typhoid in New York. But never before had an outbreak been traced to a single carrier—and certainly not one without any symptoms themselves.

Soper learned that Mallon would often serve ice cream with fresh peaches on Sunday. Compared to her hot, cooked meals, he deduced that “no better way could be found for a cook to cleanse her hands of microbes and infect a family.”