Personal Injury Lawyer | The Aunt Suing An 8-Year-Old
Personal Injury Lawyer | The Aunt Suing An 8-Year-Old
Personal Injury Lawyer | It shot around the Internet yesterday, like so many other viral stories do, and all I could do was roll my eyes. It was the story of an exuberant 8-year-old boy in Connecticut leaping into the arms of his aunt upon seeing her, and her resulting injury, a broken arm.
The story was one that any adult could imagine. The woman testified:
All of a sudden he was there in the air, I had to catch him, and we tumbled onto the ground…I remember him shouting, ‘Auntie Jen I love you,’ and there he was flying at me.”
People were aghast. One only needs to read the comments of any article on the subject. How could you sue a beloved relative? And how could you sue a child?
But suing relatives (or close friends) happens all the time, particularly in auto collisions. Who, after all, are you most likely to be with at the time of a collision? A close friend or relative. Unless you drive a taxi, you don’t often have strangers in your car.
And it’s the same with your home, in that the most likely visitors inside are family and friends.
When I first saw the aunt-nephew story, my first thought was that homeowner’s insurance would cover the incident if there was liability, and that this was similar to suing a relative over a car crash.
This is, in fact, one of the reasons we have insurance. To cover us in case we slip up and someone is injured due to our negligence.
Certainly insurance companies would prefer that folks don’t sue. It would be a great business model, wouldn’t it, to keep collecting all those premiums and never pay anything out?
In a story later in the day yesterday, the jury came back with a defense verdict — one juror said the jury simply didn’t think the boy was negligent when measured against the reasonable conduct of a child his age. OK, I can live with that.
At some point we all grow up and become increasingly responsible, and that line of responsibility won’t only be gray for a child’s conduct, but ever-shifting depending on what happened.
Would I have taken such a case? No. Because the jury did what I expect a jury would do. But eviscerate her on the Internet for it? No. She took the advice of counsel. Bad judgment call perhaps, though the attorneys defend the decision to move forward (see update).
And the injured woman was interviewed and confirmed my thoughts: Suit was brought against the homeowners policy to cover the medical bills, but you don’t sue the insurance companies, you have to sue the individuals. From CNN, who interviewed the Aunt:
“This was meant to be a simple homeowners insurance case”
Also at the CNN story, the woman testified that she remains close with the family and recently took the boy (now 12) shopping for a Halloween costume.
As with so many other things on the Internet, many people will howl and yell first due to the way a headline is written, without bothering to think that the actual conduct isn’t particularly egregious. The case may have been a loser, but it was not worthy of spilling all the resulting venom.
– http://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2015/10/about-that-aunt-suing-an-8-year-old.html
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