As timely as today's headlines. Four year old boy found dead after he was off riding his ATV in the country.

http://denverpost.com/news/ci_2922715

I skimmed through this thread and there have been several comments about where the line is between responsibility and negligence. It raises the question to me of what level of care or oversight is deemed responsible for a parent. While I agree that a vehicle trunk is a foreseeable risk, it might not be foreseeable to all. As a similar case in point, it was only a few years ago that advertisements warning of the dangers of abandoned refrigerators and freezers started to appear. In the ads, folks were advised to lock the box shut, or remove the door completely.

So does a parent providing a parental level of care have an obligation to make sure there are no hazards in, on or around their home? I agree they ought to, but what is the parents responsibility here? Any ideas of statutes?

I'm in agreement with Bot regarding the responsibility of the parent to ensure that no harm comes to their children for whatever reason. If you have an abandoned refrigerator or an abandoned vehicle on your property, and a child gets injured or killed, you are responsible. If you have a child who runs out into the street and gets killed by a vehicle, you are responsible.

But, negligence is a completely different matter. Now the burden is higher. You knew, or should have known that a specific danger exists and you did nothing to prevent that danger from harming the child.

As an example, if you allow your five year old to play, unsupervised in the front yard, and that child runs into the street and is killed, you are negligent. You knew, or should have known, that a five year old cannot be expected to avoid running into the street.

But, if you have an abandoned vehicle on your property and the kids climb into the trunk, I'm simply not buying the fact that you are negligent, based strictly on these facts.

When was the last time you even saw a refrigerator you could lock yourself in? I'm not sure I've ever seen one -- maybe on the Andy Griffith show??? :confused:

I played Mites hockey without a face mask :eek: and took a few sticks in the face as well, needless to say high sticking was strictly enforced. The main reason helmets are more popular today is weight, I raced BMX and had to wear motorcycle helmets that bobbed my head around like a bobble head and we only wore helmets for downhill when ski racing again it was all about weight. I took a few nasty spills and crashes on bikes, skis and skate boards that knocked me out and made it with only a couple trips to the hospital for head injuries which was pretty good since I was a competitive skier from first grade on up.

.....and, to this day, you can't dispose of an old refrigerator without taking off the door first. :confused:

He was negligent for not searching there before calling the police. Had he done so within a reasonable time frame, those kids might still be alive today.

He would be considered negligent if he did not perform any search.

He was not negligent for failing to search the trunk.

The police have nothing to do with it.

Well, I'll defer to narwhal for his official opinion on that score. In any case, it was inconceivably irresponsible, and his failure to take that perfectly reasonable and expected step cost those kids their lives.

What does this have to do with a parked car with a steering lock and a shift lock??

What does a lawsuit have to do with negligence? Do they need to prove negligence in order to collect damages? AFAIK, all that is required is to prove responsibility. On that subject, there is no issue.

Don't remember from the AG show but the magnetic seals on most modern freezers and refrigerators are pretty strong compared to most young'ns. If you're talking about the fridges with a latch, believe it or not they are still in use amongst the pooor in our country. A house i lived at while at school had several of this type. Not too many years ago we built stuff that would last most of a lifetime, so i'm pretty sure they are around in abundance.

Also while I'd think any self-respecting parent would feel responsible for any malady that happens to their kids, there has to be a standard criteria to determine when the law perceived them as negligent.

By extension, would being too poor to afford a new refrigerator, or not having the $$ to dispose of an abandoned vehicle make a parent negligent?

Do we know, for a fact, that he made no efforts to look for the kids?

If so, then he is not only irresponsible, but also negligent. The first thing to do when you kid is missing is to search every possible place you can think of until you find them.

However, it does ring close to home. The neighbor, who I'm not fond of in any way, apparently called the police when she returned home and all her three kids were not threre. She didn't do any searching or attempting to contact neighbors to see where they might be. Police came over here, probably thinking that I kidnapped them. I told the police that the bimbo probably told the kids to stay at a neighbor's house and forgot who the neighbor was. Sure enough, the kids turned up somewhere at some friend's house. I never found out the details.

I only know that if he did search, his effort was not adequate. A reasonable seach of his own property would have yielded results.

Was it his car? If it was I guess that explains why they aren't sueing the owner.

From a previous post.