It’s not every lawsuit that tickles the judicial funny bone.

But a Vancouver judge saw parallels this week between one woman’s proposed class-action claim against a handful of pharmaceutical companies and a legendary British comedy sketch involving an irate customer who complains that he was tricked into buying a dead parrot.

“Sometimes a consumer will make a purchase but not receive what they ordered,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ward Branch wrote before citing nearly all of the so-called Dead Parrot Sketch by Monty Python’s Flying Circus at the start of a lengthy ruling certifying the class-action claim.

The woman leading the legal charge