I just saw this video (also below) by the YouTube personality and lawyer LegalEagle.
It shows what looks to be an eight-year-old kid (give or take) kicking crates out from under someone and they fall.
Clearly the kid is at fault but he is a kid. If there is injury do the parents pay damages? Is there a crime here and is the kid headed to juvie?
IANAL but on the criminal side I believe it is entirely up to the prosecutor in most US jurisdictions, if the prosecutor decides to they should be “prosecuted as an adult” then they get prosecuted as it they were an adult doing the same thing (didn’t actually click on the video, so this is assuming this is something that is sufficiently irresponsible to warrant criminal liability) Which always strikes me as super wrong and radically against the principles of the adversarial legal system (I mean why is the prosecutor the one who gets to decide? If you are going to prosecute kids as adults, at least the judge decide, based on arguments from prosecution and defense)
IANAL of course, so could be age or other limits I’m not aware of (I mean I’m assuming a 1 year old couldn’t be prosecuted as an adult)
No court is going to try an eight-year-old as an adult. Almost all states have a statutory minimum age for a juvenile to be tried in adult court, typically in the 14-16 range. And the prosecutor can request that the juvenile be tried in adult court, but the decision will be made by a judge.
It depends on whether you are talking about civil or criminal liability. The child is almost certainly criminally liable for what is clearly a callous disregard for the safety of someone even though he didn’t directly assault his person. A clever defense attorney would point out that the victim was already engaged in a potentially dangerous activity that put him at risk without adequate safeguards but it is difficult to deny that the child’s actions were the proximate cause of injury. A prosecutor would probably try malicious mischief with intent to harm or the jurisdictional equivalent but the odds that a minor child would actually be confined for a (presumably) first offense are unlikely; more likely some kind of social counseling and/or civic service.
As for civil liability, the parents have plenary responsibility for the damage done by a minor child in their custody. However, while I think LegalEagle is correct on a factual basis, as above a defense attorney would point out that the plaintiff created an “attractive nuisance” in the stack of crates in a publicly accessible location, neglected to take reasonable steps to abate access or to reinforce the pile of crates from any kind of incidental contact, and put himself in a potentially injurious position without any kind of fall protection. If the child were injured by the falling crates or plaintiff, it might actually be the nominal plaintiff who would actually be held at fault for creating the situation even if it was action of the child that initiated the collapse, or the property owner for allowing the situation to occur on their property.
Stranger
I didn’t watch the video, but wasn’t it not too long ago that the court system tried a couple of african-american ten (or less) year-olds for a murder it turned out they didn’t commit? They had just been witnessed touching the body or something?
The kid who did that is considerably older than 8 years old. I’d say he’s in the 12 to 14 year old range, and a child that age can definitely be charged.
About half the states have a minimum age in which you can not be adjudicated as delinquent at all. Of the remaining states it doesn’t mean an 8 year old will be sent to juvie. My state has no minimum age but the juvenile system would be used to put the child into some sort of therapy and away from any criminal responsibility.
FWIW it is a really short video (less than a minute).
Devin didn’t mention fines or penalties. Since most eight year olds don’t have any source of income, a fine would effectively:
I guess a child actor could actually pay the fine, but careers for children that age are pretty sparse.
I assume to sue the parents, you would have to prove the child’s actions can be tied to the parents’ negligence. However, that will depend very heavily on circumstances. Was Johnny let out to roam the streets when he should have been home in bed? Was he improperly supervised?
I suppose this goes back to things like “who pays if Johnny throws a baseball through my plate glass window?”
I recall multipe news stories about children in Canada not being able to be charged unless they were 14; so older kids would put them up to things like shoplifting knowing the worse that could happen was they’d be picked up and given back to their parents.
OTOH, truly indisputable depravity does not go completely unchecked. Google James Bulger - 2 years old, beaten to death (head smashed in with brick, IIRC) by 2 10-year-olds. They ended up in a psychiatric facility. Some controversy over one of them (Venables) who was later released and since has committed other crimes.
Not necessarily; parents have a certain degree of fiscal liability (in the United States) for misconduct by children resulting in damage or personal injury depending on state law:
Stranger
According to your source, Texas has a cap of $25,000 on parental liability. So that 16 year old boy in Texas who ran over 6 cyclists while rolling coal won’t receive suitable justice. Glad I don’t live there. HMMM. Wonder if that’s $25k per victim.
Each victim can make a separate tort claim for injury, and each injury is a separate criminal count (although linked to one act). However, the aforementioned linked guide says:
Liability imposed on parents for a child’s negligent, willful, or malicious acts that cause property damage. However, child’s acts must be reasonably attributable to parent’s negligence in exercising parental duties.
My IANAL guess is no, parents would not be held liable unless they knew the child was a homicidal maniac, and even then, whether they could be expected to constrain his behavior. I would not presume to guess how laws are interpreted in Texas (“Texas…it’s like a whole other country!”) but given that the driver reportedly wasn’t even arrested, I wouldn’t put much faith in the justice system. It was probably the cyclists’ fault for impeding traffic and forcIng the driver to “roll coal”.
Stranger