Awesome, a 4 yo is being sued for negligence

[kiryan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyreg ... terstitial

Its really a practice thing, kids were playing moms were nearby ran down an elderly woman while "racing" their bikes (complete with training wheels). The practice is to sue everyone involved. Apparently there is a "bright line" rule where children under 4 are incapable of negligence, but its up for debate after 4 years old.

[Corth]

Negligence is a term of legal art that basically means you failed to abide by the standard of conduct expected of a reasonable person in your like position under the same circumstances. So the basis of a negligence action against a 4 year old is that relative to other similar 4 year olds, the particular one in question acted unreasonably.

Imagine that...

[Kifle]

What exactly does a reasonable 4 year old do? I threw mud at houses at the age of 4, and that is considered normal. The question should be: can we project the adult meaning of the word "reasonable" onto a 4 year old? The answer is no. In a sense, you are anthropomorphizing the child (bare with me on that word). 4 year old children have no concept of permanence, death, age, etc. They have a "working knowledge" of these things such that they are aware when something is dead, but they do not process it like an adult. Anyone with children should agree here that a 4 year old will test its limits constantly -- this is how they form their ethics and morals. The child is born tabula rasa, and they learn right and wrong through trial and error; sometimes we get lucky and the kids just believe us when we say that something is wrong; however, this is a rare case. So how can we say that any action of any 4 year old can be transposed onto the actions of another 4 year old in an attempt to find the "reasonable" action? They are all different in their development, and they are all generally unreasonable due to the early stages of human development. We don't allow 4 year old children onto a jury because they are unreasonable at that age. Could you imagine being on trial and your jury was a bunch of 4 year old children? You might as well flip a coin for the verdict.

This, in my mind, is just a case where the flaws of the precedential judicial system are brought to light. Because at one point somebody made a statement that children under 4 cannot be tried for negligence, that becomes the line of separation? It was just circumstance, I assume, that lead to the creation of the line; furthermore, it is an arbitrary number because in 1928, they knew shit about human development and child psychology. So, we allow the basis of some concrete "bright line" to be drawn by a) one who was not educated in the subject and b) at a time when the necessary knowledge to even think about drawing such a line was in its infancy at best. With respect to A, this is analogous to allowing a railroad engineer to give expert testimony on ballistics. In regards to B, this is basically like allowing a psychiatrist to get sued because he chose to treat his schizophrenic patient with drug therapy rather than a lobotomy. When it comes to it, this is nothing more than a case where the judge was too afraid of judicial activism and hyper-corrected.

[Adriorn Darkcloak]

I'm going to be a little more sincere and direct here.

This is exactly like Columbine.

All talk about the teens, video game violence, etc, etc.

No talk about parents being responsible.

This is the same thing: trying to deflect CULPABILITY and NEGLIGENCE from bad parents onto other "criminal" things. 4 year olds, video games, society, etc.

Mind you, I don't even know wtf the parents here were doing. This might just be an "oops" moment with no one really at fault. Hell, the old lady here could be at fault. But the bottom line is that that headline exists.

[Teflor Lyorian]

Kifle takes it way too far. To allow the suit simply opens the matter to arguments and a judge or jury decision. It is best not to throw out cases before they can be heard, and those that are thrown out should be kept to a minimum. How else are you going to create new local government jobs?

[kiryan]

I think its important to note that being sued is not the same thing as winning. I doubt that the negligence charge will stick, and the story is obviously a bit of sensationalism. The people who will be held responsible if appropriate are the parents.

Additionally, even though the child should be probably found to have not acted negligently, taking away the right of someone to sue another is probably a worse precedence.

Still, I'd probably think it was common sense for the judge to take the kid off the case and let the plantiff appeal if they really think they have a case. The practice of suing everyone and their mother has probably had its day.