Canton Man Dead — Canton Lakeside Daily Bugle — Cripes!

An unemployed pipefitter from Canton, Ohio died after experiencing an erection lasting a full 48 hours. Now his family is suing. The episode was brought on by a lethal combination of Viagra and Internet porn, according to a lawsuit filed against Canton’s local cable provider by the family of Daniel Garvin, who was 48 at the time of his death.

The cable company “acted in a negligent and irresponsible fashion in luring Mr. Garvin to a so-called webcam site then providing unmitigated access to it,” according to the suit, filed in the Civil Division of the Canton Municipal Court. The suit alleges that such access resulted in Garvin experiencing a “priapismic episode for a 48-hour period, resulting in Mr. Garvin experiencing a drastic drop in blood pressure and subsequent heart failure.”

The suit asks for unspecified damages, while noting that the family faced “exceedingly high mortuary costs related to proper preparation of all parts of Mr. Garvin’s body” for his funeral, which was held over the week-end.

The Garvin family’s attorney, Avrile Plaisanterie, said that “my client had received a prescription from his primary care doctor for Viagra to address a very personal issue. He was then lured into a pornographic site from a TV advertisment that should have never run, then exposed himself to this site’s unconscionably exploitative atmosphere at an Internet connection speed that clearly provided a serious medical threat to him.”

Plaisanterie noted that Garvin was aware of medical warnings associated with the usage of Viagra, “and it is not Viagra with which we have a problem. Mrs. Garvin wishes to stress that she desires that no harm come to the makers of Viagra or to the millions of patients who have benefitted from its therapeutic use.”

A spokesperson for Garvin’s cable provider had no comment other than to note that “we support our First Amendment rights to carry advertising of interest to our customers, and we remain committed to providing only the highest service levels of Internet access to all of our customers on a 24/7 basis.”

Garvin’s situation is neither unique nor unprecedented, according to Gilbert “Gib” Nodrah, director of the National Erection Treatment Institute, a non-profit organization based in Miami Beach, FL. “These induced priapismic episodes are often associated only with young men between the ages of 13 and 27,” Pole said. “Yet the condition is in fact suffered by men of all ages, and is certainly not uncommon among middle-aged married men. In fact, this is an issue that most men face every day.”