• Luckily, thought Jamie Richardson of Whitehorse, Yukon, she had medical insurance for her 7-year-old Akita, who had torn a ligament in a hind leg, but it turned out that the policy, written by Canada's largest pet insurer, Petsecure, did not cover dog injuries from "jumping, running, slipping, tripping or playing" -- that is, Richardson concluded, injuries caused by "being a dog." (After Richardson protested, Petsecure relented but, it said, only because Richardson had been a longtime customer.) [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 10-3-2016]
• The Way the World Works: Who is the most at fault when (a) a mother provides beer to her underage son, (b) who then, with a pal, gulps down a bottle of vodka and steals a car from a dealer's lot, and (c) drunkenly crashes, leaving the pal with a catastrophic brain injury? In October, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a jury verdict that parceled out "fault," but assigned more to the victim of the 2006 car theft (Rankin's Garage of Paisley, Ontario) than to the mother or the driver (because Rankin's having left the key in the car overnight made it irresistible to "teenage car thieves"). [Toronto Sun, 10-13-2016]