Four year olds can get sued

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

How the heck do you sue a four year old when they don't have any money?

...Well , to be literal , of course it's their parents who are being sued...

The children should have known better, because four years old is a reasonable age to understand that you can't slam your bike into a person, especially an older one. Plus, the mothers apparently weren't paying that much attention if they managed to race their bikes into her. It's clear that regardless of the cause of death (which may have been unrelated, but a broken hip is essentially a kiss of death once you're elderly), they did enough damage for her to have probably gotten some pretty significant medical bills. And just because she died doesn't mean that the bills disappear; it means that the estate has to pay them. It may be more than they can afford.

I don't know. I guess a little part of me says that kids are kids, but for the most part, I believe that this is perfectly logical, really.

The terms, "guardian ad litem," "litigation guardian," and, "next friend," are all used where a person such as a parent or a public trustee stands in the place of an infant (in the legal sense) in litigation.

Children are, from the moment of their births, legal persons with the capacity to sue and be sued.

Since negligence falls to the "reasonable man" standard, I don't think any jury is ever going to award damages in this case. The judge has merely said the plaintiff can have their day in court. He hasn't ruled what will happen on that day. It sounds like this one hasn't come up before, since the only court precedence set is that someone under 4 cannot be sued. That this case even exists is just ... weird.

Is it possible there's an insurer involved and suing the 4 year old is a way to make the insurer liable?

Things like this have happened with motor insurance claims.

Otherwise it's pointless as the four year old presumably has no money and the debt will be discharged long before they do.

Hey it makes as much sense as the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are individuals.

To stop them from what ever it is they are doing that causes the suit. A law suit does not necessarily mean a payment. It may also produce an injunction.

ruveyn

We already knew that 10 and 12 year olds could be sued (see RIAA's entire body of legal work), so why not four-year-olds?

LOL what would a 4 year old pay if they were sued? Sweets?

There are law-suits to enjoin as opposed to seek damage payments.

ruveyn

In Canada, the guardians of minors under the age of eighteen are legally liable for the wrongs of the kid. The kid is named in the lawsuit as a defendant in the style of cause on the statement of claim and all other foregoing legal documents but it is the parents who the damages are collected from.

Its insane and rather frivolous suing 4 year olds, the blame lays squarely on the idiot mothers, WTF were they thinking

Hey Friskeygirl, welcome back.

OKI I could not read all of it because it is making me angry. How the f**k do you sue a 4 year old? That is BS!

That is by no means the general case. There is considerable variation by jurisdiction and by area of law.

At common law, liability only attaches where the parents or guardians (as the case may be) have acquired a contractual obligation (for example, agreeing to be liable in enroling their children in a recreation program), or have themselves a duty of care to the defendant (for example, as the occupier of property on which an injury is done to the defendant by conditions created by the child). Statute can, of course, modify this, but the statutory imposition of liability on parents is a rather novel circumstance, and I am aware of few examples.