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New York Judge Rules 6-Year-Old Can Be Sued
suraj.sun sends this snippet from Reuters:
"A girl can be sued over accusations she ran over an elderly woman with her training bicycle when she was 4 years old, a New York Supreme Court justice has ruled. The ruling by King's County Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten stems from an incident in April 2009 when Juliet Breitman and Jacob Kohn, both aged four, struck an 87-year-old pedestrian, Claire Menagh, with their training bikes. Menagh underwent surgery for a fractured hip and died three months later. In a ruling made public late Thursday, the judge dismissed arguments by Breitman's lawyer that the case should be dismissed because of her young age. He ruled that she is old enough to be sued and the case can proceed."
What happened to accidents? It seems that everything in life needs to be controlled, somebody is accountable. There is no space for accidents, so somebody got to hang, that's when it comes to small girls. But when you talk about serious crimes like foreclosure fraud and the wall street fraud then they don't press charges because 'they might find the culprit'.
But it also means that the debt will be collecting interest for a long, long time before payments can start. If the parents aren't wealthy enough to pay up, the child may end up with a debt so large that it will be unable to pay it. Ever. Because it did something stupid at age 4.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
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Table-ized A.I.
>Is this the problem with the lawyers, or is this a problem with the judge?
It might be a form of protest. The judge has just brought it to a national spotlight that the law allows (and maybe requires) him to permit a suit to go forward against a six year old for a liability incurred at age four.
The judge knows damn well it won't get past the first hearing, but instead of sweeping the real issue under the rug, he has made it so that it *cannot* be ignored.
I don't think this judge is insane or inhuman as he's been made out to be. I think this might have been a stroke of genius that will end up with the insane laws being changed.
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If all life is equally valuable, then whoever will live the longest (statistically) with a transplant should win.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
We Europeans tend to forget that the US is massive. It's twice the size of the entire EU, though only has 3/5 of the population. Population wise it's comparible to the Eurozone countries.
The major difference is that the culture seems to be based around 'city states' more than 'countries' as it is in the Eurozone..... your average Texan is as close to someone from New York as a Finn is to a Greek.
My conjecture: The lawsuit against the child gives him a way to compel testimony from the doctor who treated the woman, and is a discovery vehicle for the woman's medical records.
They aren't going after the kid's assets. They are looking for an angle to go after the doctor who treated the woman, didn't do everything possible to save her life, and let her die.
All of the people commenting on this story are focusing on the kid, and the weirdness of suing a six year old. Very few seem to be thinking like a lawyer (not just incarnately evil, but also greedy.)
Dollars to donuts says a malpractice element enters into this story.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
^ this a hundred times.
I have tons of trouble convincing my friends out of country that the US isn't the one portrayed on television and there are very, very, distinct differences in culture even only a few hundred miles apart. Some parts of the country actively HATE other parts and where it not for our central government would have nothing to do with each other.
I'm out in California after much time in the East and would completely love it if California where to leave the union. Those americans are crazy!
--- I do not moderate.
Except this can't be the first hearing. This was decided by a justice of the New York Supreme Court, so this must have gone though a lower court or two first. There are at most two higher courts in the USA - the Federal appeals courts (don't know about this one) and the US Supreme Court.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem