WHAT should you do if flight attendants won't examine your scrotum? Marcel Cote, a Canadian man, decided to sue. Mr Cote's lawsuit stemmed from a February 2008 incident during which flight attendants on Air Transat refused to look inside his pants. The details make the litigious Mr Cote seem slightly more sympathetic—but only slightly. The Toronto Sun reports:

The curious incident occurred February 15, 2008 during a flight from Montreal to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Marcel Cote was comfortably seated in business class an hour after takeoff when, for some unknown reason, he felt enough discomfort to make an emergency visit to the washroom, where he discovered spots of blood on his body. In a panic, Cote asked for the help of a flight attendant, who quickly came to his side. When the passenger noticed that the agent was female, he asked to be assisted by a male attendant because the bleeding seemed to be coming from his genital area. When the male attendant came to him, Cote then asked to be closely examined so that the exact nature of the problem can be determined. The employee declined, giving him absorbent paper instead. Indignant and distressed, Cote quickly expressed his wish to see a doctor.

It turns out that Mr Cote had a ruptured vein, which was stitched up once he landed in Mexico. (A friend sent him to the hospital in a taxi.) Mr Cote argued that Air Transat should pay him $8,000 for his trouble, but a Canadian judge disagreed, and threw out the case. The judge even made Mr Cote pay the airline's court fees, putting him $189 further into the red.

While I don't think Mr Cote was owed money for his ordeal, I am convinced that the flight crew could have been more helpful. "Is there a doctor on board?" announcements are a common feature of air travel—even for minor situations like airsick kids. The judge was right that "it was not incumbent upon a flight attendant to conduct the medical examination of a passenger, a measure reserved for the medical profession." But while the flight attendants promised to "contact a physician if the illness was grave enough," according to the Sun, that probably didn't make Mr Cote feel any better. Checking to see if there was a doctor on board might have been a reasonable compromise.