Jury Finds for 12-Year-Old In Closely Watched Hugging Case
13th October 2015
This is, or was, a New York case in which a 54-year-old woman sued her eight-year-old nephew for negligence, alleging that he acted unreasonably when he leaped into her arms after she showed up at his birthday party in 2011. According to the Westport News, the boy had just been given his first bicycle and was riding it around when his aunt showed up. “Auntie Jen! Auntie Jen!” he exclaimed—which is already unreasonable, because once is plenty—and ran toward her. “I remember him shouting, ‘Auntie Jen I love you,” Auntie Jen testified, “and there he was flying at me.” She said she tried to catch the boy but they tumbled to the ground. Auntie Jen broke her wrist in the fall, or maybe I should say that the defendant broke the plaintiff’s wrist by leaping upon her negligently, without warning, and with malice aforethought.
That, or something like it, is what she alleged when she sued her nephew for negligence two years later.
I had relatives like that, fortunately mostly now dead.