Ches Crosbie said he is hoping his blog will gather new evidence he can use to bolster a class-action lawsuit against Eastern Health. (CBC)

The lawyer who is spearheading a class-action lawsuit over botched breast cancer tests in Newfoundland and Labrador is paying cash for stories of mental anguish that patients have suffered.

The money is not going to people who write the posts. Instead, lawyer Ches Crosbie is donating $10 to a cancer charity for each comment that is posted to his blog, which has included articles about the class-action suit he organized against Eastern Health, the authority at the centre of the testing scandal.

Crosbie took the action this week to bolster his case that all members of a class-action suit are entitled to compensation.

Cancer patients have expressed concern that several types of people may be excluded, including: patients whose test results didn't change, patients whose treatment didn't change after a retest, and family members of patients who have already died.

Crosbie said he made the offer "just as a sort of added incentive for people to post comments which I think would be useful to me when it comes time to evaluate the degree of mental anguish that people have been through."

Crosbie launched the class-action lawsuit well before the Newfoundland and Labrador government appointed Justice Margaret Cameron to study how Eastern Health's pathology lab turned over inaccurate hormone receptor tests to almost 400 patients over an eight-year period.

Cameron, whose stinging final report was released last week, determined that errors were made at every level of the health-care system, from improper handling of samples, inadequate training and "practically non-existent" quality controls.

Crosbie is donating $10 to Daffodil Place, a hostel for cancer patients and their families to use while being treated in St. John's.

June Bennett, a patient who wrote a comment on Crosbie's website, was treated for a type of breast cancer known as a ductal cancer in situ. Bennett didn't receive a hormone receptor test, and was offered minor surgery to remove cancerous cells. She chose to have both her breasts removed.

"We've all been affected terribly, emotionally, by this," Bennett said. "If you are within that time frame set out by the class action, then everybody should be recognized and compensated."

Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC), which insures Eastern Health as well as many hospitals across Canada, disagrees with Crosbie's view, and believes that only those directly injured by errors in hormone receptor testing should receive compensation.

St. John's lawyer Dan Boone, who represents HIROC, did not agree to a recorded interview with CBC News.

He said, however, that the class-action group currently includes people who don't deserve to be compensated. He would not be more specific.

Newfoundland Supreme Court certified the class-action lawsuit in 2007.