You can’t make this crap up:
New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Wooten says Juliet Breitmen, a NYC girl who was four years old at the time of the accident, was old enough to be sued after hitting an elderly woman.
Breitman and Jacob Kohn, also four at the time of the incident, are accused of hitting 87-year-old Claire Menagh while racing their bicycles (with training wheels) on the sidewalk in April 2009. According to the lawsuit, Menagh was ‘seriously and severely injured’ and suffered a hip fracture that required surgery (she has since passed away from unrelated causes).
The suit, filed by Menagh’s estate, accuses the two children and their mothers (who were supervising the children at the time) of negligence. Justice Wooten said there’s no evidence the children were too young to understand “the danger of riding a bicycle into an elderly woman.”
Those kids’ allowances are going to be garnished but good. What’s sad is that this “news” is getting more publicity (here, here, here and here) than the almost daily killing of a cyclist by a motor vehicle, sometimes with partial intent, and me thinks it’s likely (however unfortunate) these kids and/or their mothers will receive a harsher penalty than the vast majority of homicidal drivers out there.
