Ordinarily, news like this would cheer me up.

A Canadian hairdresser who says he suffered from depression and phobias after finding a dead fly in his bottled water has lost a case for damages.

Waddah Mustapha had been awarded $341,775 in damages in 2005, but the Supreme Court of Canada has now overturned that award.

The court said the bottling company, Culligan of Canada, could not have foreseen the psychological damage.

As I say, ordinarily this would make me happy. Victory for common sense, I’d say; rolling back some of the stupidity that’s created the compensation culture.

However, despite the overturning of this one case, it doesn’t actually mean anything of the sort. Because it only got over turned at the Supreme Court, meaning that it had gotten as far as there without being slapped down.

Which means that it took something this outrageously stupid to get knocked down… Which means that common sense has nothing to do with it.

And that’s more than a little bit depressing.