I commented on this opinion when it first came out last week. A sad case, with sad delusions.
Today the Court of Appeal understandably changes the opinion (as well as the caption) to delete the names of the parties. "Aiden G." gets changed to "A.G.". "Caroline G." gets changed to "C.G." Ditto for the rest of the participants.
Which is great. That's what we do (by rule) on the federal side of things when minors are involved. It's also equally appropriate here.
Though I'll add one thing. The Court of Appeal -- and the parties -- shouldn't be all that worried about things. Right after I read the original opinion, I spent five minutes or so trying to figure out the last names of the parties through a basic internet search. Just to see if there was some additional crazy stuff out there on the web. No dice. Even with the names of the parents and the kids. Not that easy.
Mind you, with that information, I was able to obtain the names -- with only a tiny little bit of work -- on some specialized databases. But even though the results were interesting, I thought it sufficiently private to keep the stuff to myself.
But the vast majority of the public wouldn't be able to get that information just from the names. So fear not.
Still, the right thing to do is what the Court of Appeal did. Refer to 'em by initials. No reason to put this family law stuff out there for everyone to see.
