pantsfarm

This article strikes me as the latest in a long line of idiotic people choosing litigation over good parenting and encouraging [tag]personal responsibility[/tag] for one’s idiotic behavior.

I’m at a loss for specific examples at the moment, but I feel like this is definitely not the first time something like this has happened. A quick google search for the phrase “parent sues” yielded another case from 1998 in which a parent sued a library for failing to block their children from accessing porn. This strikes me as kind of similar, though not exactly.

I guess I just don’t understand why these companies (or public institutions, even in the case of the library) should be held responsible for “protecting” these kids. How is that not the responsibility of the parent to keep their kids from getting in trouble? If I should have a child and he should decide to run through a window should I go ahead and sue the window company for failing to have taken adequate steps to prevent the kid from cutting himself on the shattered window having run through it?

I want to relate this whole issue to that of violence in video games, though I’m not really sure how best to do that. Suffice it to say I think in that case it is also the job of the parent to not let their 14 year old play Grand Theft Auto, not that of the game developer, publisher, or retailer. I find it hard to believe that given the M rating she (the grandmother) couldn’t have known better than to buy this game. Speaking of GTA, a similar issue is raised in the case where some kid goes and starts killing people and the game gets blamed.