Consumer Law Group is a small law firm putting together class action lawsuits. If you meet the criteria, then signing up can help them build evidence for their case that the Canadian Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is turning away too many people (or paying too little).
Criteria
If you don’t meet it then you’re probably wasting your time.
- Health Canada authorized vaccine
- Claim is filed within 3 years after the date of vaccination, date of death, or date when an injury first becomes apparent
- The injury is reported to a health care provider
- Date of vaccination was on or after December 8, 2020
- Vaccine was administered in Canada
- The injury is serious and permanent or has resulted in death
- A likely causal relationship between the vaccine and the injury
To establish #7, you’ll need a formal diagnosis of a medical condition related to your injury. I’ll attach some notes on that at the end of this post.
Signup form
Are they legit? Yes.
You can find the founder, Jeff Orenstein, on the Law Society of Ontario website, which lists his company CLG as well as his company’s email.
You can also find him on CANLII, the website which makes court documents available on the Internet. He has litigated class actions in the past.
Recap
If you meet the criteria, sign up and I think they will help you try to get through the Canadian compensation program. If you don’t get proper compensation, then they’ll presumably use you as evidence that the program sucks. This will help them get evidence for their class action, which will be a good thing for the vax injured.
Appendix - Big list of health conditions
- Heart: Myocarditis, pericarditis
- Allergy: Allergic reaction to the vaccine or a vaccine component such as PEG (polyethylene glycol).
- Shoulder injury: SIRVA, frozen shoulder, adhesive capsulitis
- Bleeding disorders: Low blood platelets (thrombocytopenia), VITT (Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, ITP (Immune thrombocytopenic purpura).
- Blood clotting disorders: e.g. embolism (blood clot), stroke
- Facial paralysis: Bell’s Palsy.
- Nerve damage: Guillain barre syndrome (the immune system damages the nerves, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis).
Certain rare conditions:
- (Death)
- CIDP (this is sort of like the permanent form of Guillain Barre Syndrome)
- Parsonage Turner syndrome (brachial neuritis)
- ADEM (Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis)
- Aplastic anemia (not enough new blood cells)
- Cellulitis (bacterial skin infection)
- Complex Regional Pain Syndrome - a form of chronic pain that usually affects an arm or a leg
- Encephalitis - brain swelling, which can be caused by an autoimmune response
- Polymyalgia Rheumatica - inflammatory disorder that causes muscle pain and stiffness, especially in the shoulders and hips
- Polyneuropathy - simultaneous malfunction of many peripheral nerves throughout the body
- Pemphigus - blisters on skin (Google image search this to see what it looks like)
- Transverse myelitis - inflammation of both sides of one section of the spinal cord
- Vasculitis - a group of disorders that destroy blood vessels by inflammation
- *MIS-V - overlaps heavily with Kawasaki disease but isn’t quite the same thing. (*But see below.)
Other medical conditions
Another way to argue your case is to point towards side effects that your country’s health authorities recognize. MIS-V is one of those conditions.
In the US, small fiber neuropathy isn’t currently recognized by the letter agencies but there are probably other countries that do recognize SFN as a side effect of the vaccine. Germany sort of recognizes “Post Vac Syndrome”, which is Long COVID symptoms from the vaccine. So, it can depend on what country you’re in.
These situations are kinda dicey because there will be a medical pissing match between you and the other side trying to avoid giving out money. However, the lawyers may not want to touch this stuff because it’s not very profitable.
Certain diagnoses like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, etc. are iffy. You can just fill out the form and see what they say.
How you get a diagnosis
You have to look at your symptoms and figure out if you might have a condition in the big list above.
Then you have to figure out how you would get a diagnosis.
- To get a referral to a specialist, you have to politely talk to your doctor and not come off as a hypochondriac who had too many consultations with Dr. Google. Some doctors hate patients who see Dr. Google on the side and they may ignore your symptoms because of it. So maybe you point out that you may have X and you’d like your doctor to help you figure out if you have X or not (instead of pushing your doctor to diagnose you with X, which they may not like). If you can’t talk your way into getting more medical help, then you can always fire your doctor.
- Some medical diagnoses are somewhat subjective. Doctor shopping can increase your chances of getting a diagnosis. For example, the doctors which really like IVIG will lean towards diagnosing their patients with GBS, CIDP, and SFN.
Is this a good idea for your health? Maybe not. You can get misdiagnosed if you see too many doctors or doctor shopped your way into somebody who misdiagnoses you. On top of that, a few tests like cardiac MRI have real risk that can leave you with very debilitating long-term side effects (gadolinium toxicity is no joke). See the post on risky medical tests .