4-Year-Old Can Be Sued, Judge Rules in Bike Case

[Evo]

So, what kind of judgement could they get against a 4 year old? Can they get a judgement against future income? Put the careless kid in reform school? The article makes it sound like the judge feels the child intentionally or carelessly rammed her bike into the old woman, which may have contributed to her death 3 months later?

Citing cases dating back as far as 1928, a judge has ruled that a young girl accused of running down an elderly woman while racing a bicycle with training wheels on a Manhattan sidewalk two years ago can be sued for negligence.

He concluded that there was no evidence of Juliet’s “lack of intelligence or maturity” or anything to “indicate that another child of similar age and capacity under the circumstances could not have reasonably appreciated the danger of riding a bicycle into an elderly woman.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyregion/29young.html?no_interstitial

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

she isn't being held liable.

True. The judge ruled that she could be sued, not that she was liable. I suppose that if the suit succeeds, then she could be held liable. In my opinion, it's a risky proposition on the side of the plaintiff. The jury may let the parents off out of sympathy for the child.

 

[lisab]

I think she should act as her own lawyer.

 

[Pinu7]

A four-year-old is not even a real person. I don't see why she should be responsible for anything she done. Might as well be suing the bike company.

 

[hypatia]

The law says children may be sued, but the parents are held liable for children under the age of 17. The parents may face a payment judgment.

 

[Upisoft]

BTW, if they decide to sue her, what about the jury? There must be children in the jury or it will be not fair...

 

[rootX]

This reminds me of "Fifth Business" novel.

It is unfortunate that a 4 year old can cause harm but it shouldn't be possible to sue them.

 

[stevenb]

Courts and judges often are compelled to consider the best interest of children, sometimes over other important concerns. I would have preferred the judge act in the best interest of the child here. This poor little girl is going to grow up with the guilt that she killed an old lady, and there is no way her parents can protect her from this (except perhaps to settle for unreasonable terms, - anyone suspect a "legal strategy" here). It doesn't matter whether this is true or not, or whether the case wins or not. The suit implies she will be questioned by lawyers in depositions and maybe in a trial. Hence, she will be constantly reminded that she hit the lady and in the end she died. These cases can take years, and this girl will have no chance to heal. To me, this is an injustice. I hope that the poor women who died would not approve of her family's behavior in the aftermath of this tragedy. I can't imagine any elders in my family supporting the harm of a child as revenge for an accidental injury, even if ultimately a mortal wound, and I would never soil the memory of such a loved one by associating their name in such a vengeful or greedy act. - And it is an act of vengence or greed, irrespective of what the letter of the law may say.

Whatever anyone might think about the carelessness of this child, or negligence of the parents, there are far more ugly things in this world, and here it stares us straight in the face.

 

[D H]

I would have preferred the judge act in the best interest of the child here. This poor little girl is going to grow up with the guilt that she killed an old lady, and there is no way her parents can protect her from this.

Her parents could have stopped her from racing down the sidewalk in the first place. Did they? Noooo! Just the opposite: The mothers of the two children who were racing were "supervising".

When kids act negligently it is the parents who are at fault. The lawsuit is against the kids -- and their parents. The judge did not decide whether this particular lawsuit has merits. The judge merely decided that this case cannot be dismissed out of hand. The lawsuit can proceed.

 

[rootX]

Her parents could have stopped her from racing down the sidewalk in the first place. Did they? Noooo! Just the opposite: The mothers of the two children who were racing were "supervising".

When kids act negligently it is the parents who are at fault. The lawsuit is against the kids -- and their parents. The judge did not decide whether this particular lawsuit has merits. The judge merely decided that this case cannot be dismissed out of hand. The lawsuit can proceed.

So children should stop playing outside ... ?

 

[D H]

So children should stop playing outside ... ?

DId I say that, or are you putting words in my mouth?

 

[Mathnomalous]

Her parents could have stopped her from racing down the sidewalk in the first place. Did they? Noooo! Just the opposite: The mothers of the two children who were racing were "supervising".

When kids act negligently it is the parents who are at fault. The lawsuit is against the kids -- and their parents. The judge did not decide whether this particular lawsuit has merits. The judge merely decided that this case cannot be dismissed out of hand. The lawsuit can proceed.

Thinking along those same terms, why is an old person walking on a Manhattan sidewalk? Do they not know they should be in Florida or Arizona at that stage of life?

I fail to see how a kid racing on her bike may act negligently. If anything, sue the parents for the child's behavior but not the child directly.

 

[rootX]

DId I say that, or are you putting words in my mouth?

You said small kids racing on the sidewalk in an act of negligence.

Old people also walk in the parks etc where children play as well.

 

[D H]

Thinking along those same terms, why is an old person walking on a Manhattan sidewalk?

The judge didn't decide that the woman won the case. Whether the woman was acting negligently is irrelevant at this stage. It might become relevant during the actual lawsuit.

I fail to see how a kid racing on her bike may act negligently. If anything, sue the parents for the child's behavior but not the child directly.

Suppose two adults were racing down the sidewalk and one of them mowed down an old lady. Who would be at fault: The racers or the old lady?

When an adult acts negligently, the lawsuit is against the adult. Children are a bit different from adults: When a child acts negligently, the lawsuit is against both the child and the child's parents. It can't be just against the parents because the parents were not the ones who directly caused the harm.

 

[Office_Shredder]

You said small kids racing on the sidewalk in an act of negligence.

Old people also walk in the parks etc where children play as well.

Children shouldn't engage in activities that will result in the death of another person is in fact what DH said. You're going to have to be far more specific on how this translates to a ban of all outdoors playing

 

[rootX]

Children shouldn't engage in activities that will result in the death of another person is in fact what DH said. You're going to have to be far more specific on how this translates to a ban of all outdoors playing

1. Is it proven yet that death was caused due to this incident? Looking at only OP, it does not seem so.
2. What children activities can and what cannot cause death?

 

[Mathnomalous]

The judge didn't decide that the woman won the case. Whether the woman was acting negligently is irrelevant at this stage. It might become relevant during the actual lawsuit.

Suppose two adults were racing down the sidewalk and one of them mowed down an old lady. Who would be at fault: The racers or the old lady?

When an adult acts negligently, the lawsuit is against the adult. Children are a bit different from adults: When a child acts negligently, the lawsuit is against both the child and the child's parents. It can't be just against the parents because the parents were not the ones who directly caused the harm.

But you are assuming the child knows (s)he is acting negligently. What 4 year old child thinks racing a bike, anywhere, may constitute an act of negligence? Do they even know what negligence means at that age?

 

[Upisoft]

She died three months later of unrelated causes.

They somehow managed to kill the old lady with very dangerous "unrelated causes".
So if we assume that every second a person dies from "unrelated causes", then the children playing outside are responsible. Let's sue them all... And no play if not behind 3m tall barbwire fence!

P.S.: It is obvious that if someone has to be held responsible that are the parents. I though that in US children were protected. Fairy tales...

 

[D H]

But you are assuming the child knows (s)he is acting negligently.

No, I am not. I am assuming that kids that age can cause harm. I am assuming that kids don't know any better; they are kids. I am assuming that the kids' parents who should know better. I am assuming that parents should stop their children when their children start acting negligently. Is this what happened here? No. The mothers were present and were "supervising".

 

[Evo]

1. Is it proven yet that death was caused due to this incident? Looking at only OP, it does not seem so.
2. What children activities can and what cannot cause death?

They're not seeking the death penalty. Root, read the article and stop making posts that have nothing to do with it or putting words into people's mouths.

 

[stevenb]

Her parents could have stopped her from racing down the sidewalk in the first place. Did they? Noooo! Just the opposite: The mothers of the two children who were racing were "supervising".

I'm not excusing the parents. If the case has merit, then I have no objection to them being sued. However, not isolating the child from this caustic situation is a huge and damaging mistake.

When kids act negligently it is the parents who are at fault. The lawsuit is against the kids -- and their parents.

A 4 year old can not act negligently. A child can only act maliciously. If the child deliberately tried to hit the old lady, then that would be different. If a child is just having fun racing, then it's an accident as far as they are concerned. If the parents encouraged their racing in a place where pedestrians are at risk, then the parents are potentially negligent.

My point is that the child should not be used as a pawn to force a settlement, to avoid damage to the child. That is clearly the strategy a cold lawyer and cruel plaintiff is going to try. The judge should block that (if within his discretion). Family courts routinely try to protect the child. It's not clear to me why other courts don't have the same option.

 

[Evo]

But you are assuming the child knows (s)he is acting negligently. What 4 year old child thinks racing a bike, anywhere, may constitute an act of negligence? Do they even know what negligence means at that age?

It was ruled that at her age (almost 5) she should know that riding her bike into anyone would hurt them.

On a separate note.

To other posters on here that didn't bother to read the article, children under the age of 4 are exempt, she's almost 5.

Any more nonsense posts, posts having nothing to do with what is in the article, or putting words into another person's mouth will be deleted and infraction given.

I may go back and delete the nonsense already postsed to get this back to the facts.

 

[rootX]

Children shouldn't engage in activities that will result in the death of another person is in fact what DH said.

They're not seeking the death penalty. Root, read the article and stop making posts that have nothing to do with it or putting words into people's mouths.

I don't believe I misinterpreted the above post wrong to which I replied to and which explicitly suggests that this incident resulted in the death of another person: old lady. I only said that the incident did not cause the death of old lady. In addition, I implicitly stated that any outdoor harmless children activity can turn out to be a disaster. I did not said anything else. Neither, I talked about death penalty.

Nonetheless, I will re-thought about what I posted.

 

[Chi Meson]

I'm totally with D H on this one.

"What he said." Every word.

 

[Evo]

I don't believe I misinterpreted the above post wrong to which I replied to and which explicitly suggests that this incident resulted in the death of another person: old lady. I only said that the incident did not cause the death of old lady. In addition, I implicitly stated that any outdoor harmless children activity can turn out to be a disaster. I did not said anything else. Neither, I talked about death penalty.

DH never said that, Office Shredder was wrong.

 

[Gokul43201]

They're not seeking the death penalty. Root, read the article and stop making posts that have nothing to do with it or putting words into people's mouths.

The death penalty?? Where does root say anything about the death penalty?

 

[DaveC426913]

Yeah this thread is, like, the anti-PF thread.

Whatever happened to discussing the facts and using logic instead of sensationalism and sarcasm?

Lock the thread until everyone has their grumpy-nap.

 

[mugaliens]

Woah, folks! Let's take a step back and see what's really going on, ok?

"Citing cases dating back as far as 1928, a judge has ruled that a young girl accused of running down an elderly woman while racing a bicycle with training wheels on a Manhattan sidewalk two years ago can be sued for negligence."

This, on it's face, is a clear case of case law run rampant. It's a gross violation of a judge's requirement to rule not only in accordance with both statute and case law, in common sense. If I'd been a judge, I'd have thrown it out for no other reason than as a message to the legislators to say, "whatever law is on the books is so totally wrong it's beyond belief. Fix it!"

Sometimes, judges have to put their careers on the line and do that. It's rare.

 

[D H]

A 4 year old can not act negligently. A child can only act maliciously. If the child deliberately tried to hit the old lady, then that would be different. If a child is just having fun racing, then it's an accident as far as they are concerned.

That is your opinion, and that differs from the opinion of the court.

Stepping away from this particular case, suppose I have a steep driveway up to my house. Suppose that I pull up the drive, put my car in neutral, and fail to engage the parking brake. My car rolls down the hill, across the street, into your yard, and then crashes through your front door. You are going to sue me, not my car. My car is an inanimate object that cannot think for itself. The negligence was solely mine.

Suppose instead that I did engage the parking brake when I came home. In this case, my poorly-raised 16 year old son and his JD buds decided to go car bowling. They unlock the car, disengage the parking brake, and watch what ensues. Hive fives all around when the car smashes into your living room! You cannot sue just me; I engaged the parking brake. My son, while a minor, is not a mindless car. He is a thinking being; he is the one who caused the damage. It would be fruitless to sue just my son because he has no money. You need to sue both my son and me. You need to sue my son because he is the one who committed the negligent act, me because I am fiscally liable for my son's negligent acts.

Third case: I arrive home with my two year old daughter. I unbuckle my daughter and step out of the car to pick up the newspaper, leaving my daughter in the car. She plays with the parking brake and somehow disengages it. Now when the car crashes into your living room you do sue just me. In the mind of the court my daughter does not yet have the necessary cognitive skills to be held accountable. She is more or less mindless in the eyes of the court.

There is some age at which a child is deemed to have sufficient cognitive skills to have some rudimentary knowledge of right versus wrong. In the state of New York, that age is apparently four.

Yeah this thread is, like, the anti-PF thread.

Exactly. We should have been picking that article apart for being poorly written and appealing to emotion. That article could have been written with a completely different spin, "Judge finds that parents may be held responsible for their child's acts." That kind of article doesn't sell to other news outlets. Yellow journalism does.

 

[mugaliens]

Folks! A four-year-old child's brain isn't ANYWHERE NEAR the capacity of rational thought admissible in the courts, shy of between 6 and 17 years, depending on the child, and given the child's behavior, I'd say it's closer to the 17 year-away point than the 6-year-away point.

I'll go out on a limb, here: This judge is out to lunch. She needs, at the very least, a serious in-depth refresher in developmental psychology from both an accredited and highly-reputable university program, as well as continuing input from the same and oversight from the review level until she has continuously demonstrated a two-year pattern of rational judgement void of the violation of rationality she has exhibited in this case.

Sheesh! And Gah... Seriously, this current outcome, barring immediate correction of the gross injustise is, just gross.

 

[Upisoft]

There is some age at which a child is deemed to have sufficient cognitive skills to have some rudimentary knowledge of right versus wrong. In the state of New York, that age is apparently four.

This is maybe lawful, but it is not right. Not all children grow up the same way. Maybe majority of children have some rudimentary knowledge of right vs wrong, but not all of them. My son(age 4), for example, doesn't think he is doing anything wrong when he is terrorizing our cat. He finds it funny. Despite all our attempt to explain him it is wrong and how the cat doesn't like it. The problem is that our cat does not complain or fight back. The most our cat will do is to run away. But my son likes running and he thinks that they are playing. So, he sees no wrong. Yet he is intelligent boy with communication skills like 5-6 years old.

 

[D H]

Stop acting emotionally. Do some research. Think.

After I did some research I found that New York and New Hampshire are the only two states where the concept of parental immunity still applies in full (or did in 1996; see http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/reform.pdf). You can however sue the negligent child in New York (and the parents are responsible for debts incurred by the child.) Crazy, yes. Crazier still is the notion that parents cannot be held accountable for the acts of their children.

 

[Upisoft]

Stop acting emotionally. Do some research. Think.

After I did some research I found that New York and New Hampshire are the only two states where the concept of parental immunity still applies in full (or did in 1996; see http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/reform.pdf). You can however sue the negligent child in New York (and the parents are responsible for debts incurred by the child.) Crazy, yes. Crazier still is the notion that parents cannot be held accountable for the acts of their children.

That's also crazy, yes. It doesn't help with the emotional response either. More crazy does not make it better.

 

[rootX]

That is your opinion, and that differs from the opinion of the court.

Stepping away from this particular case, suppose I have a steep driveway up to my house. Suppose that I pull up the drive, put my car in neutral, and fail to engage the parking brake. My car rolls down the hill, across the street, into your yard, and then crashes through your front door. You are going to sue me, not my car. My car is an inanimate object that cannot think for itself. The negligence was solely mine.

Suppose instead that I did engage the parking brake when I came home. In this case, my poorly-raised 16 year old son and his JD buds decided to go car bowling. They unlock the car, disengage the parking brake, and watch what ensues. Hive fives all around when the car smashes into your living room! You cannot sue just me; I engaged the parking brake. My son, while a minor, is not a mindless car. He is a thinking being; he is the one who caused the damage. It would be fruitless to sue just my son because he has no money. You need to sue both my son and me. You need to sue my son because he is the one who committed the negligent act, me because I am fiscally liable for my son's negligent acts.

Third case: I arrive home with my two year old daughter. I unbuckle my daughter and step out of the car to pick up the newspaper, leaving my daughter in the car. She plays with the parking brake and somehow disengages it. Now when the car crashes into your living room you do sue just me. In the mind of the court my daughter does not yet have the necessary cognitive skills to be held accountable. She is more or less mindless in the eyes of the court.

There is some age at which a child is deemed to have sufficient cognitive skills to have some rudimentary knowledge of right versus wrong. In the state of New York, that age is apparently four.
Exactly. We should have been picking that article apart for being poorly written and appealing to emotion. That article could have been written with a completely different spin, "Judge finds that parents may be held responsible for their child's acts." That kind of article doesn't sell to other news outlets. Yellow journalism does.

A car and a child bike don't have same momentum. On average a car cause far more harm than any child bike. Thus your comparison is unfair.

I assumed that the sidewalk was empty and the old lady should also have known children are coming towards her.

There are too many simple things in life that can turn out to be deadly. I consider children (not young teenagers) racing on sidewalks simple and normal activity not something that need to be stopped. If you want to see this as a dangerous act and parents who encourage this as acting negligent, you need to bring more than one case to prove that.

There are many other similar activities like: A child playing snowball can also hit say an old lady/pregnant woman. Should parents stop children from playing that? Or, every winter children play hockey outside their homes .. hitting an old person can cause more harm than small child bike.

 

[BobG]

There's more assumed than the story says.

For one thing, parents in New York can be held liable for their children "willfully, maliciously, or unlawfully" damage property. But a valid defense is that the parents showed diligent supervision. Plus, the cap is only $5,000 per incident, so the plaintiffs wouldn't recover all that much by just suing the parents (not to mention that 4-year-olds riding bicycles with training wheels don't present an unavoidable hazard to most people).

NEW YORK: Parents are liable when their children "willfully, maliciously, or unlawfully" damage property. There is a cap of $5,000 per incident. Damages may be mitigated by a limiting financial status of the parents, or by showing diligent supervision.

DH's reference refers more to juvenile offenders of the law than for liability for something such as a 4-year-old running her bicycle into an elderly lady. This is more like being responsible for a car accident you caused than criminal activity.

And the judge finding that the kids could be sued doesn't mean the plaintiffs will win, nor does it mean the kids will testify. In fact, I'm not sure the childrens' testimony would be much value since there's probably not much question about what actions actually transpired. Childrens' testimony isn't that desirable for younger kids since their testimony tends to be perceived as less reliable.