If you thought the tort system in this country could not get any more ridiculous, you would be wrong. This week, the biggest news coming out of the state of New York was that a judge there had ruled that a four-year-old child could be sued for a bicycle accident.
The lawsuit has been filed by the estate of 57-year-old Claire Menagh. In April 2009, Menagh was walking outside her apartment building in New York, when she was run into by a four-year-old riding a bicycle. The child Juliet Breitman had been riding on the sidewalk with a friend. The two children’s mothers had been walking behind the children. The collision sent Menagh to the ground, and she sustained injuries. Three months later, she was dead of unrelated causes.
The estate of the woman sued both the children and their mothers, claiming that their negligence caused the accident. This was the point where the lawsuit should have been tossed out. That was not what happened at all. A judge in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan has ruled that the child can be sued for negligence after all. The judge based his decision on previous cases, dating back to 1928.
As we were reading the New York Times article that discusses the case, what really struck us was the number of comments to the article, supporting the judge. These are people who think that the judge made the right decision in allowing a lawsuit to proceed against a four-year-old child who was riding a bicycle on the sidewalk.
It just goes to show that far too many people in this country would like a chance to blame someone else for misfortune, and get paid for it. It’s also all the more reason why you should seriously consider asset protection.
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