A retired lawyer from Vancouver is risking a 28-day prison sentence to test the necessity defence as a legal strategy to block fossil projects that would drive up the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
David Gooderham, 73, was arrested August 20, 2018 and accused of violating an injunction during the blockade at the Trans Mountain construction site in Burnaby, British Columbia, National Observer reports. “Gooderham admitted that he sat in the path of workers who were trying to get to the pipeline,” Observer states. “But he said he did so expressly for the purpose of trying to present the court with a ‘defence of necessity’.” #bcpoli