QWANZ

TWO questions, one answer....   >>>

TWO questions, one answer.



Can a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old be sued for negligence in the state of New York?



Should such young children’s names be published in a story about such a suit?



The answer, it seems, is yes.



The case concerns a young girl and boy riding their bicycles on a quiet East Side neighborhood street in New York City. Claire Menagh, an 87-year-old woman using a walker, was knocked down by one or both of the children and suffered injuries that required an ambulance and hospital treatment. Three months later, Ms. Menagh died of unrelated causes, and her estate sued the children and their mothers, Dana Breitman and Rachel Kohn, who were supervising the children at the time of the incident.



Justice Paul Wooten of the State Supreme Court ruled last month that the 4-year-old was old enough to be sued in a civil personal-injury case. The New York Law Journal reported on the ruling on Oct. 28 and published the children’s names. The Times, learning of that publication’s story, followed suit the same day, also naming the children.



The interest in the story was tremendous. More than 300 reader comments on the article, many of them critical of the parents, were published on The Times’s Web site. Other news organizations picked up the story, and social media users further propagated it. The children’s names were distributed widely.