The minor case: my 11-year-old nephew absentmindedly ran into a car and hit the rear view mirror. The car had been going slow, but he got some bruises, tears were shed, a mirror was broken, nothing earth-shattering. Now the car owner’s insurance insisted that the broken mirror caused a loss of value figuring 3000 € (no, it wasn’t a Ferrari, but whatever), my sister’s insurance didn’t accept it (justifiably) and so it went to court.
When my nephew was questioned by the judge, a part of the interrogation went like this (paraphrased, I wasn’t eye witness to the trial):
11-year-old nephew: “I was chasing after my friend when I ran into the mirror.”
Judge: “And then you hit the door?”
Nephew: “Yes.”
According to my sister this was a factoid that had been absent every time he had told the story before. I don’t know why she did it, but isn’t it a total dick move from a judge to ask a child a suggestive question like this?
I’m primarily interested in the moral implications since the trial didn’t take place in the U.S., but if there’s a probable legal infraction by the judge, feel free to comment on that too.
Maybe I was too long-winded, but the gist of my post was if it is ok for a judge to ask a child a suggestive question. The details of the case are not that important, but given the fact that English isn’t my first language and that I had two glasses of wine already, it’s quite possible that I wasn’t clear enough. What precisely didn’t you get?
Assuming that we’re talking about a car mirror attached to a car door, it seems like a reasonable followup question for clarification. Was there a dispute about whether the child caused damage to the door that makes you think this was somehow leading or inappropriate?
If the judge doesn’t know your nephew broke the mirror, why is your nephew involved in an insurance hearing based on the FACT that he broke the mirror?
It seems to me, the judge should have asked, “What happened next?” instead of asking a yes or no question. Children sometimes have a tendency to feel they must agree with something an authority figure assumes. “And then you did X?” and then child feels that X is the thing the authority figure wants to hear and so they say yes.
Of course, but I somehow have the notion that (maybe solely from Hollywood movies) that suggestive questions are not kosher in court (“Objection! The attorney posed the witness a suggestive question.”). Now the thing about hitting the door was a suggestive question because it had never been mentioned before in the case,
First it’s the judge, not a lawyer, but isn’t leading the witness allowed in some circumstances? This is a kid, his mother present, and the judge would need some leading questions to elicit the truth.
Oh I see, it was a matter of phrasing. What I meant was a “leading question”, which in German means “Suggestivfrage”. Thus the wrong wording, sorry. Mods, would you please change the word “suggestive” with “leading” in the title?
Again, is this an insurance hearing or a criminal case? In a hearing where the nephew has already admitted fault, they’re debating the amount of the award. In a criminal case, they’re determining his guilt or innocence.
Yes, I think that maybe there was that dispute. I don’t know many details about the trial (so maybe it was silly to post it at all), but I don’t know my nephew for a liar, and he never mentioned anything about touching the door at all before, so I thought that maybe the judge lead him to this statement with her questioning.
Ah. Another potential source of confusion: “rear view mirror” ususally refers to the mirror that’s inside the car, like this, so I was having trouble understanding how your nephew could have hit it by running into a car.
I think I see what EinsteinsHund is getting at. 3000 Euro seems pretty excessive for just a mirror so is the owner of the car claiming that the kid did other damage in addition to the mirror? Was the door dented or the paint scraped as well? It sounds like the kid admitted to breaking the mirror but not to doing any other damage to the car. If there was preexisting damage to the car and the judge is leading the boy with questions that make him take responsibility for additional damages that he didn’t do then I’d have a problem with that. But the boy may be leaving out important parts of the story. It’s logical that if the mirror is broken and door is dented that the same action probably caused both things and it makes sense for a judge or a lawyer to ask questions to get that on the record.
Sigh, so it was a twofer goof on my part in the OP. :smack:. See, English is a hard (but beautiful) language, and sometimes the differences and similarities between English and German are subtle (think false friends), and then nothing makes sense anymore. :o
ETA: yes, it was the mirror on the side of the car. (Pearl Jam had a song “rearviewmirror” on their second album. Maybe I was thinking of that.)
