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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."
Okay, a pair of four year olds on their bikes. Accidentally hit an old lady.
And they're going to sue the four year olds?
Okay guys. It really IS time to kill all the lawyers.
*Grabs a gun*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The law (which he probably didn't write) says that accountability starts at four years old. The child was four.
What else was the judge supposed to do?
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'.
If I would have intentionally rammed my bicycle into anyone at the age of 4 years and 9 months I would have received, at a minimum, corporal punishment.
Of course today that would probably get my parents sent to jail.
If you're old enough to be sued you should be old enough to vote and vice versa. People who have grievances with a child should sue the guardian or supervisor of the child. In most cases the problem with a child should probably be dismissed as an accident. (Children are little walking accidents after all.)
blame Macaulay Culkin for this. YOu can see what a disaster a young child can cause.
PS, this was typed by my dog. Sue him!
1. Haul 6 year old girl into the court.
2. ???
3. Justice!
It's bizarre. If they judge her, then what?
She can't be sent to prison, has no income to pay a fine, and I doubt very much she can be made to perform community service. So I'm just wondering.
Also, there's this:
But running around is what 4 year old children do. I think pretty much everybody has noticed that young children have some problems with fine motor control and are ocassionally running into people while playing. They're children, they haven't completely figured it yet. What are the parents supposed to do, keep them on a leash?
It's shit like this, America.
- When you do things right, no one will be sure you've done anything at all.
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
So as long as I only murder sufficiently old people, I really shouldn't be held accountable by the legal system?
No but hows about we wait until the individual is old enough to understand the concept of life and death before we take them to court for murder. 4-6 years is NOT old enough.
"Here's my cwayons, my huggy bear, my Dora The Explorer backpack, my woller skates, and my puppie, Snookie. Datz all I have, Mam."
Table-ized A.I.
> Use his brain. Four year olds can't by any
> stretch of the imagination be held accountable.
I think you underestimate the power of imagination.
But the main point is, you're right. We all think it's crazy to pin a woman's death on a toddler riding a bike with training wheels.
We also think it's crazy to blame the victim, an 87 year-old woman who may not have had full situation awareness and may have lacked the agility to evade a collision.
It's also hard to blame the mom - she let her kid ride a bike, which I think our culture considers benign.
The truth is that this was an accident. What's broken here is that somebody has decided to sue unwitting participants for an accident best blamed on happenstance and chaos.
... walking into someone by accident WHEN YOU ARE FOUR.
Remember, this is an age group that still pees or poops itself when out playing.
Maybe, just maybe, you should specify which country you live in, not which continent.
I live in Germany, and you can do fuck all to a 6 year old. A 6 year old could throw in your window and nobody, not the kid nor the parents would have to pay.
First, this was a trial court ruling by a judge, not a justice. This did not create or modify precedent for other courts. In New York, unlike the rest of the US, the low-level trial courts are called Supreme Courts. What the rest of us would think of as "The Supreme Court" is called the Court of Appeals. Yes, it's very confusing.
Second, this was a ruling on a motion to dismiss, not a ruling on the merits. This only says the child may be sued, not that the child is liable, nor even that the child (as opposed to the parents) would be made to pay anything. The parents are being sued as well; this is not some spiteful attack on the child in particular.
Third, this is not surprising in the least from a legal perspective and relies upon well-settled legal principles. In general the law in the US does not recognize an absolute age limit to liability. For negligence, children are judged according to the standard of a reasonable child of that age (unless they are undertaking an adult activity such as driving a car). For a four year old, that's not saying much.
Fourth, there's nothing uniquely American about this. Several European countries have similar or even harsher rules. In France, for example, children are judged according to the same negligence standard as adults, which is much stricter than the US rule.
Saying "not to sound cruel" doesn't magically make this not a cruel comment.
So if 4-year-olds are now held to same accountability standards as adults, are they now allowed to drink, vote, be drafted into the army and carry concealed firearms as well?
It's a nice thought, but no, not all life has the same value. You want proof? Talk to a doctor about requirements for organ transplant recipients. Young before old, no druggies or drunks, no one with uncurable conditions, or even lasting illnesses. If all life was of equal value, then it'd simply be a matter of "who started needing the replacement first."
Then there's the legal system. Self-defence makes murder legal. Hmm. But if your life is worth the same as your would-be killer, you should be just as liable for his death as he would have been for yours.
I could go on, but it should be obvious by now that by any measure, different lives have different values.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Does this mean 4 year olds have the right to consent? I mean, if they can be sued for their actions why the hell can't they be trusted to make their own?
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
They are the child's guardian. If your child throws a ball and breaks someone's window, the parent is responsible to pay for and replace the window. Maybe not legally, but definitely morally.
Actually they probably would have spanked me even if it was accidental just to emphasize the point that I shouldn't have done that.
The 80s were such a cruel time to grow up.
Yes, though a small child running into most people would be one of the minor annoyances that happens all of the time, results in a talking-to, and everyone moves on. In this case, the woman was unfortunately fragile enough that the result, which normally would be harmless, was actually deadly. Should the child, who clearly already doesn't know not to run into people, be held responsible at age 4 for not knowing that elderly people are incredibly fragile and get potentially fatal complications easily?
The poor elderly lady's life may have the same value, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same durability. A 40 year old friend of mine was sucked under the wheels of a big-rig and survived, while my grandmother died due to having a very curable disease but for which the surgery would have killed her. Considering that healthy 4 year olds still use plastic cups, it's unfortunate but not surprising that the destructive force of large toddlers mixes poorly with the elderly.
Of course, that's why this is being litigated in Civil court, and not Criminal court.
The ______ Agenda
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
A mother in New York has successfully sued her newborn for failing to properly aligning himself for natural delivery, forcing a cesarean section. While compensatory damages are only $14,789, the woman is seeking $2,000,000 in putative damages for a future the humiliation at her spa and Bermuda resort. The baby has counter sued the mother for failing her lamaze class, seeking damages for in proper immunization from failure to emerge through the birth canal. More at 11.. Next, sperm sued for infertility!
Post, without any guiding commentary, something of a legal and non-technical nature which Slashdot readers are ill-equipped to comment intelligently on, due to (1) their lack of relevant background knowledge, plus (2) the quixotic expectation that the same analytical skills which underlie their professional success in technical fields can simply be brought to bear on unrelated subjects, unmodified, and unsupplemented by any additional education on the subject, self-administered or otherwise, which might provide a foundation for a sensible thought on the subject.
Result: a bunch of geeks who are clueless about the law, and about the sensible practical judgments which are the foundation for just about any legal doctrine that doesn't appear to make sense to an outside observer, and many of whom are perpetually butthurt over information "not being free", make a bunch of uninformed and nonsensical comments about how lawyers and judges are crazy and stupid.
Look, parents should keep a closer eye on their kids. They need to spend more time with them, listen to them, and play a more active role in their child's development.
If parents don't, then they should be jailed until they do. ;-)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
"legal murder" is a mistatement of terms. Murder is premeditated illegal killing. Self-defense is usually not premeditated, and it's not illegal. I think the technical term for killing is homicide, and that doesn't assign guilt or assume planning. There are adjectives to describe the cause of the homicide.
Is that really the world you want to live in? Where parents keep their children on a 12 inch leash and act as a force field protecting their children from the universe, and the universe from their children? Because that produces kids who are by definition unresponsible, and by training co-dependent.
By the way, the mom was supervising the child. A fact that nobody had disputed until you.
Great, as a lawyer it's great to know that you're going to try and kill me for the actions taken by another lawyer who I don't know, have never met, and is handling a case that I would never take. You're also going to kill the lawyers who presumably tried to stop this from happening, the other side of the lawsuit.
This is a pretty standard ruling under American Tort law. In civil negligence cases, the standard for negligent acts performed by children is whether a reasonable child of the defendant's age, intelligence, and experiences would have exercised reasonable care in this situation. (This is, of course, more generous a standard than is applied to adults, where the standard is whether a reasonable person would have exercised reasonable care. This is to say that, for the child, the test is more subjective and is geared specifically to the intelligence and experience of the child in question.)
As to the point of all of this, the deceased woman's estate can make a civil negligence claim against the child for medical expenses (which may be quite high - I haven't the first idea as I'm not a doctor), lost income/life expectancy (which in this case will be very low), and funeral costs. The one thorny legal issue that will likely come up in this case is whether the death was proximately caused by the bike crash. If there were some intervening cause of the death, say if the deceased caught an infection while in the hospital and the infection killed her, that might reduce the defendant's liability. (On the other hand, it might not. It will depend on the facts of the case. I'm just highlighting legal issues here.) Other potential claims will depend on the facts of the case. If, for example, the deceased was walking with her family when the child on the bicycle struck her, those family members might have claims in their own right for physical or emotional harms they suffered.
Lastly, the issue of who will actually pay is very simple. This child is not going to pay herself. This child is not going to jail. Standard homeowner's insurance includes a general liability policy which covers damages in civil lawsuits. The fact that the suit was even brought in the first place indicates that the defendant's family almost certainly has such a policy because it would make no economic sense to sue absent them having one. (In civil suits, insurance money is very easy to get. As a plaintiff, you really don't want to have to deal with getting liens on property, garnishing wages or seizing bank accounts. One can do it, to be sure, but then you have to get into other considerations of what the state law will allow you to take, and you actually have to get your hands on the property/money to seize it. Often, if their isn't a ready supply of insurance money to go after, plaintiffs will elect not to sue.)
By the way, this is not news. This is a sad story that got picked up by some media outlet because most members of the media (to say nothing of most people in the United States) don't understand the common law of negligence that is applied in state courts.
Actually when I was 5 years old I was allowed to play outside unsupervised, as long as I didn't cross any major streets and came back if my parents blew the whistle that they used for the purpose.
87 year old ladies don't spring out of nowhere.
You've obviously never been to Florida, don't you?
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.
>The judge is an idiot and not fit to sit the bench.
The judge is smart enough to realize that a lawsuit against the kid will open up the woman's medical records to the court, and will demand testimony from the doctor who treated her, and who presumably didn't do everything possible to save her life. She didn't bleed out on the street under the kid's bike. She died after months of (mis)treatment by a quack. I think that's an important element to this story that's being overlooked because of the sensational nature of the child being sued.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
No. You're confusing equal with identical.
Organ transplant triage is based on success rates, not the value of life. The young and those with no chemical dependencies or complicating conditions have a documented higher success rate. They can undergo the extremely traumatic procedures and will be more likely to have positive outcomes. This is, in fact, based ultimately on the fact that two lives *are* equal. Given the choice between a 70% chance of saving one life and a 40% chance of saving another, which is the more responsible choice of action? If, on the other hand, there were a surplus of suitable organs, then such procedures would be done to these less attractive patients. Triage is about preserving the most life, not selecting which is more valuable.
Self-defense is an accepted justification because it deters attacks. It means an attacker has to accept that by breaking another's right to safety, they themselves lose that same right. Again, this is equality in action, not a value judgement on life.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
If the parents of the girl are liable, so are the care givers of the old lady. Someone must be looking after the 4yr old girl on the sidewalk. Why the fuck is there no one to look after the 87 yr old? If the 4yr old knocks into the 87 yr old and dies, is the old lady liable? As if the old lady is fast enough to avoid an incoming bike. How this case goes to court is beyond reason.
So how exactly can you avoid a collision unless you are on the bike? (or holding your child with a leash?)
Write boring code, not shiny code!
>The truth is that this was an accident.
It could still be medical malpractice. The reports dwell on the kid, and don't say much about the fact that the victim died a significant time after receiving medical care. I wonder if the judge is allowing the case to go forward so that more attention can be cast on other details.
Doubtful. An 87 year old who suffered a hip fracture has a 50-50 chance of dying in the next year no matter how good the medical care. Yep, we can fix hip fractures - but it's a big, big stress to the system and lots of people can't hack it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I think it's completely insane for the family of the victim to want to be heard in court. In most countries this would be ruled as an accident, regrettable but nevertheless an accident between a small child not completely in control of their actions and an elderly person less aware and agile than a typical 40 year old. The media around the world is laughing at the USA right now, go and do an internet search to see the kind of reactions that are being published.
Do the majority of Americans believe a costly court case is the only way to find out all the facts and reach some resolution after such an unhappy accident? I think people are suprised in many countries that in the USA the resolution of a sad accident is not solved through the two families talking after a coroner has defined the facts, perhaps arbitrated by a counsellor, but that the victim's family is claiming that emotional laying to rest can only be achieved by sueing a pre-school child in court.
In most countries I think the police and legal authorities would rule that cause of death was an unfortunate coming together of circumstances, and probably there would be an opportunity for the victim's family to meet the child's parents. Child's parents would be terribly upset and offer sincere apologies, maybe ask the child to apologise, victim's family would probably be distraught but recognise that very sad accidents happen and accept apologies and understand that things happen that we can't control. Both families would probably agree that the small child was not an intentional murderer, not evil at heart, and agree that a small child shouldn't be traumatised or penalised for life for an accidental action so try to impress upon the child that you must be careful in what you do, but not load the kid with massive guilt complexes.
Meanwhile in the USA the victim's family wants to go to court and sue a pre-school child for millions.
Seems like you're moving back to a pre-20th century era when children were considered small adults with the same rights and responsibilities. Progress in science has proved that children are biologically as well as experientially unable to make the same level of decision making as adults and hence have to be treated differently. Their brains have not yet formed, they are simply not adults and cannot be considered accountable as an adult.
In my youth, my friends and I routinely rode our bikes all over creation and my parents had NO idea where we were. We were often 10 miles from home with no way to contact us. Good thing there weren't any perverts back then!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Is the real issue here that: Because the 4 year old committed this act, the parents were going to write it off and say, "Well, they're 4 years old, what do you want?" and be free of culpability. I don't think that the lawyers really want to sue the 4 year old, I think what they want is for the parents to not be off the hook for damages...am I right? The issue is not that they want to sue a 4 year old, they want to sue the parents! While I don't agree with either of these suits, it does make sense that someone would want to sue the parents of a child that caused an accident to recover some of the costs incurred from said accident.
Am I the only person that thinks this is reasonable? The sensationalist headline is VERY misleading.
it does not leave a bruise.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
live in Europe where (almost) everybody has insurance (civil resposibility) against such things, but only if the parents admit having done something wrong during the supervision of their kids.
If they did everything right and the kid does damages, the victim has to sue the kid.
In Germany, children up to 7 years are in principle not capable of being guilty of anything. So you can't sue them. (Maybe you can sue them, but the case would be very simple: Child under seven, you've lost). In road traffic, children under 10 are never at fault. Parents will be responsible if they were negligent. So if they are insured, and the damaged party was a friend or relative, they will tend to claim to have been negligent (and insurance pays). If they are not insured, they will tend to claim they have not been negligent. And judges know that even properly supervised children are quite capable of causing damage, which then nobody will have to pay for.
So this case wouldn't have a chance in hell. For the woman who was injured and died, that would have been just bad luck. Like tripping over your own feet and hurting yourself.
You wonder what is going on in the United States, their legal system appears to be pretty much broken.
Generally broken, but working flawlessly when it's being actively malevolent, as apparently in this case.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
You're right, the cost should be borne by insurance. Accidents happen, that's what insurance is for.
That argument cuts both ways:
By the same token, should a frail 87 year old woman be allowed to roam the sidewalks without assistance? Should she be left to her own devices, unprotected from every risk -- tripping over uneven pavement; stepping off the curb and landing wrong; her own perhaps-failing vision that didn't warn her of an oncoming hazard, such as toddlers on bicycles??
Perhaps her family should be sued for letting her out on her own, without their aid and protection. Perhaps she should be sued for failing to get out of the way of an obvious hazard, such as uncoordinated toddlers on bicycles.
Or maybe we should recognise that unless everyone lives in a bubble, sometimes stupid accidents happen and people get hurt, and no one party is to blame.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Car analogy:
So, if I hit a car that's so badly rusted the entire frame collapses, I'm liable to buy them a new car? No. I'm probably liable for the $300 replacement cost of a scrapyard rustbucket.
If it doesn't work this way with people, as well as cars, it should. I should not be liable for extreme bodily injury such as a fractured hip, if your osteoporosis is so bad that my actions would have caused a slight bruise for a healthy adult.
Not to mention the idea that suing a 4 year old is just crackers....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
There are no more perverts now than there were back then. What we have more of is paranoia.
The parents are also being sued. What was going on here is that they were trying to have the child removed from the suit because ,they argue, a 4.75 year old is not capable of negligence.
In this particular case the law is working as intended. This judge has not stated if the child is negligent, guilty or anything of that nature. Instead they simply ruled on the current law which states that in their district of operation no child under the age of 4 may be sued. The suit may proceed as to determine liability, damages etc. and that is all the judge was ruling on.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Not to sound cruel, but at 87 years old she was expected to die any day any minute.
Not to sound cruel, but we might as well allow people to go around viciously beating 87-year-olds for any reason at any time, because they are expected to die any time.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
No, the worst thing about corporal punishment is that it is used as a fig-leaf by child abusers.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Normally insurance works like that. If I get injured in an accident, that is why I have medical insurance. They pay for fixing me up. Doesn't matter if I caused it or if someone else did, they cover my bills. That's the point.
Now the only cases where this differs is in cases of negligence or if something was deliberate. If someone was negligent in their actions then they can be accountable for the harm they caused.
People need to accept that, in life, shit happens. That is the whole point of insurance, for when shit happens that you cannot afford. The actions of a 4 year old? Those count as shit happening. 4 year olds lack the mental capacity to be at all responsible for something like this. They cannot understand the consequences their actions have or plan for the future as implied. This isn't a case of "Well they should learn," no I mean they CANNOT, their brains are not developed to that stage. That whole, pesky, biology, thing.
"There's no question of what value you place on the lives involved."
Of course there is. It's implicit within your *reasonable* force. If an inocent life were as valuable as the one of a criminal within his criminal intent, then it would be no way you could apply reasonable force against the criminal in such a manner that the criminal ended up dead: the very fact the he died would be argument enough to probe you were beyond reasonable force.
Yes, but you can get a lot of that within a state or city too, especially a bigger city. You'll have an area that's predominantly white, black, Chinese, or whatever.
First, I'll state that I'm not an American, but rather I'm one of your northern Canadian neighbors. It's funny because I can definitely notice differences in upbringing and culture between Americans and Canadians, but I can also notice a lot of similarities, and I'll bet that the influence of American TV tends to increase those over time.
But hell, I can go to Vancouver (BC) or Toronto (Ontario), and see big cultural differences in a regional sense, and people nearly hate each other in those areas too. Try shopping in some areas of Richmond (Greater Vancouver Area, predominantly Chinese) and you'll be lucky to get any service if you're not Chinese or with a Chinese friend. Heck, a lot of provinces/cities have a hate-on for Toronto, and don't even get me *started* on Quebec.
But to compare that to Europe still seems a bit silly. At least for the most part I can go to a restaurant in North America and order a coffee/coke in English. Yeah, some people have funny accents that makes it a bit hard to understand, and there are areas that are culturally a bit non-english, but for the most-part there's still a lot of *sameness* too.
Doofus, it's her family who is suing: the lawyers are not suing on their own behalf!! The family is on the hook for legal bills, I'd guesstimate anywhere between $500k to $1M. Imagine you'd suddenly become liable for that amount of money. You'd sue everyone and their mother too, it's merely a matter of self-preservation. The alternative is to go bankrupt, like many do in the U.S. due to medical bills.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Lets just ignore that she's 89 years old and would've died soon, probably in the same way too as falling over is quite a common occurrence; only this time they have a finger to point for hospital fees, if it weren't the child it'd be the owner of a mall or the maker of her shoes etc.
So as far as my argument of socialized health care? Shit happens and people need medical treatment, it's a basic and universal need for *everybody* in the world.
You missed a biggie there. NO 4 year old is reasonable. They're simply not capable of it. It's somewhat interesting that you suggest a calculation of risk that they were (and still are) years away from being able to even perform the mechanics of. 4 year olds don't know how to add (other than perhaps a rote knowledge of a few single digit additions), much less multiply.
At that age, they might well tell you they were chased by a bear in their bedroom and actually believe it to be literally true. You expect them to somehow predict the likelihood of causing a serious injury to an elderly adult from a particular action? Worse, from a non-volitional accident made likely from a particular action?
As a side note, if we're going to allow adults to sue 6 year olds, doesn't basic fairness suggest we must allow 6 year olds to sue adults as well (perhaps even pro se)? I can just see a court proceeding where the jury is asked to determine if, in fact, Mr. Johnson is a doodie-head.
Yep. Same conclusion the organ transplant lists came to.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
A jury of her peers, right? Can you imagine trying to get a dozen four-year-olds to sit still for ten minutes, much less through a whole trial?
And then there would be the potty breaks, the snack breaks, the "he looked at me funny" breaks, the "she's touching me" breaks... yeah, I would also say go for a jury trial. That would be hilarious.