STUPIDITY AND GREED

I was reading a news item on Yahoo tonight and was shocked to see what our justice system has evolved into in one area. I don't know who is worse in this story - the judge or the plaintiff family. The incident took place in New York City.

The brief history is that two mothers took their children out to ride their bikes. The children were FOUR years old and the bikes had training wheels. The mothers (the article indicated) were walking along behind their young children, maybe talking. The kids (being children) started riding faster - now really, how fast can a four year old pedal a training wheel little bike?

As they rode past a building, maybe looking at each other as they rode along, an 87 year old woman was walking down that New York street. The children accidentally hit the woman and she fell. Help was summoned and the woman was taken to the hospital for her fall. Nothing else happened until three or four months later.

Being a mother, I'm going to give these mothers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they took that immediate action to help the woman, and admonished their children for their increased speed and not looking where they were going. That is what most good mothers would do. After all, at four years old, they were just little kids, playing, not realizing what could happen.

Three months after the incident, the 87 year old woman died of unrelated health factors, not due to the affects of her fall that day. At 87, that could be expected in life. However, the greedy descendants decided to sue the four year olds for negligence in a wrongful death. WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING?

A judge had to decide whether to let the case go to a jury. He cited a case dating back to 1928 and said that suing a four year old is legal. It seems the legal age was in fact FOUR back in 1928. Since the children were each over their fourth birthday, the judge agreed to let the case proceed to trial.

The adult descendants of an 87 year old woman, who maybe lived a good long life, and had other health concerns, decided to place the blame of death on two FOUR year old children, suing them for negligence in playing, riding their bikes with four wheels. What has this greedy world come to?

Now the parents have to hire lawyers to defend their little children for doing what little kids do, being themselves. They did not have the knowledge or age of common sense to know they were doing wrong by pedaling faster, or that something might happen. But the woman's death was not as a direct or indirect result of the fall, according to the news item.

If the deceased didn't leave her relatives enough money in her Will or Estate, I think it has been reduced to a greedy situation to go after two FOUR year olds when they were not responsible. This world has become corrupt with greed and deceit as the greedy rich get richer, the middle class is disappearing, and the poor are getting poorer. Now the "system" has to "go after" FOUR year olds who probably won't even understand what is happening to them. How things have changed!