4-year-olds can be sued
 

4-year old children can be sued and held responsible in civil courts in the US now. This is crazy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/nyregion/29young.html

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

Using the same logic, the parents could sue the elderly woman's family for letting her wander around on the street by herself. Completely ridiculous.

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

Crazy US people :vikki: :p

The fault rests with the parents alone.

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

So a four-year old can sued for negligence? I thought minors lacked a developed sense of reasoning and that's why they're not treated the same way as adults when it at the least comes to criminal cases.

Suing a 4-year old for running into you with their bike on the sidewalk? What has this world come to? Let me guess, the 4-year old should have been riding their bike on the street?

Dear old lady, put in your hearing aids and be aware of your surroundings. If you can't realize there's a kid on a bike coming in your direction, how are you supposed to be aware if a car or truck is coming at you? I don't want to hate on old people in general, because my grandmother is one of these almost completely oblivious senior citizens. Half the time she doesn't wear her hearing aids when she goes out, she doesn't look before crossing the street and expects the world to cater to her because she's in her eighties.

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

Really? So it's their fault that some old geezer who should've been in a nursing home stumbled in front of their kids bikes?

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

I find that absolutely absurd; with the lack of 'intellectual' maturation, how would they know what they were doing? I swear, people are always in it for the money.

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

What, so all elderly people should be confined to nursing homes?

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

Geez, I swear, some of you make generalizations more than you suck air.

*c wut I did thar?

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

This is so absurd that it'll probably be changed later.

Re: 4-year-olds can be sued
 

Well, in Australia, children under ten can't be held legally responsible for their own actions and they can't be legally sued or charged criminally until they're eighteen. Unless it's a special case which means they can be criminally charged when they're seventeen. Children under ten do not have the mental capacity to understand the implications and/or consequences of their own actions.
Likewise, the elderly woman probably should have kept an eye out, but we can't blame her for not doing so. Any reasonable person wouldn't expect to be run over on the sidewalk.