General

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by op4_camper

I have said this time and time again. kids should be monitored on the internet. It's not a place for kids. You wouldn't let your kid run around a mall talking to strangers. Yet for some reason parents let them run amok.(sp) on the web. Where by the way you know theres dangers people.

Millions of teens are walking around malls unsupervised everyday. I agree though that kids should be supervised while on the internet.

There are all sorts of dangers in the world. It's a parent's job to teach kids about them and prepare them to deal with situations that come up. If you have a child that is suffering from depressin, then obvioulsly that child will need more guidance and monitoring than others.

I do not know a lot of the details about this case, but if the teen had prior depression problems that were known about, I doubt that suspect in question would be convicted of any substantial crime. There would be no way to determine if this child would not have committed suicide anyway. Teenage suicides are always tragic. It doesn't matter how the teens get to the point of doing the act, it's always very sad.

[Z50]

Originally Posted by Christian Nelson

I guess if this is the law.. My response if I were the parents would be to off the woman myself, and turn myself in declaring that because this nation could not give me justice, I had to get it myself, and let the chips fall where they may.

Really?

What about the daughter of the woman who did this? would you have her go into the same depression state that 'your daughter' (the one who killed herself) was in? What if the woman heard your plans to kill her and killed you instead. You did threaten her life, should she get off in three years?

One of my biggest issues with Law is thoughts like those stated above. The law is meant to be black and white, you commit a crime, you do the time. If you did not commit a crime you do not do the time. If this woman has not committed a crime (and it appears that she hasn't) then she should not be punished - Even if you personally don't like what she did. There should be no space in a court room for personal feelings or emotional movements.

If you (and the rest of the state/country) feel that what was done should be illegal then write to your law maker and make it so. I personally would be more inclined to vote in a law that makes you (as the parent who did not protect the daughter from herself) responsible than someone on the other end of the internet responsible. The internet is a powerful tool, it should not be infringed by the government as doing so infringes on freedom of speech/press. If the daughter wasn't psychologically stable then she should not have been on the internet (or possibly outside of a hospital, hind sight 20/20 and all of that)

What happened was cruel and tragic but not illegal. What you propose is not only cruel and tragic, it is also illegal. I would be more than happy to dish out a death sentence given a seat on the jury.

[Christian Nelson]

If I chose to take that path, that is a consequence I would be prepared to accept, being the death penalty.

I am frankly quite surprised more of this doesn't go on. For example, the families of the people OJ killed, I'm sorry, you guys had your chance to mete out justice, and you blew it, someone else has to do that job now.

Because of the failings of the court, now I will have to face murder 1.

Fine.

That won't bring my loved one back, but it will allow for justice to have been served.

Vigilante-izm is very American.

[Drum]

Anyway, what you guys all want is vengeance. Though I doubt very highly that this woman will see a jail cell, the criminal law is not the only recourse for all your righteous retribution.

You guys forget about the civil court and monetary judgment revenge.

The standard of proof is very much lower in civil court and the concept of negligence as giving rise to an unanticipated result like this is very much more established than trying to convict someone of a crime that does not quite fit.

In civil court there is a long accepted legal tenet that states "You take your plaintiff as you find him." In other words, if you knock a kid with a thin skull of his bike and it kills him where any other kid would have survived, you cannot claim that the thin skulled plaintiff has any "blame" related to his thin skull.

You knocked him over based on your negligence. If he is injured, you will pay no matter how unanticipatible his injuries might have been.

D

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Drum

The standard of proof is very much lower in civil court and the concept of negligence as giving rise to an unanticipated result like this is very much more established than trying to convict someone of a crime that does not quite fit.

Intentional or Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress aren't the easiest torts to prove, but it's about all they'd have to work with here.

There are still foreseeability limits on the scope of damages caused by negligence. Palsgraf and the foreseeable plaintiff aren't really a problem here, but foreseeable type of harm would be (Polemis comes to mind from torts class, long ago). For negligence, the eggshell plaintiff rule is only relevant to the scope of liability for a reasonably foreseeable type harm.

I'd question whether suicide is really within the foreseeable harms from online taunting, though it would depend on what the adult knew about the kid and exactly what she said. There's probably enough to keep the jury's verdict in favor of the plaintiff from getting JNOVed.

And due to the facts, the jury probably wouldn't care too much about the fine legal distinctions

[Christian Nelson]

Originally Posted by Drum

Anyway, what you guys all want is vengeance. Though I doubt very highly that this woman will see a jail cell, the criminal law is not the only recourse for all your righteous retribution.

You guys forget about the civil court and monetary judgment revenge.

The standard of proof is very much lower in civil court and the concept of negligence as giving rise to an unanticipated result like this is very much more established than trying to convict someone of a crime that does not quite fit.

In civil court there is a long accepted legal tenet that states "You take your plaintiff as you find him." In other words, if you knock a kid with a thin skull of his bike and it kills him where any other kid would have survived, you cannot claim that the thin skulled plaintiff has any "blame" related to his thin skull.

You knocked him over based on your negligence. If he is injured, you will pay no matter how unanticipatible his injuries might have been.

D

I believe that is what Ron Goldman's family ended up doing, right?

Wrongful death suit..

I'm just saying if all other avenues are fruitless, you deal with things yourself. Sometimes this happens, and I understand completely this mindset.

Frankly, I am still very surprised what I proposed doesn't happen more often.

[Drum]

I don't think it would be that hard in civil court. An intentional action with no other reasonable utility other than to cause another a general harm? I don't think I would have any problem inspiring the natural vengeful tendencies of the jury (as evidenced by some of the responses here).

There is no question of identity of the defendant or what the defendant's actions actually were. The only issue real issue would be how much was the little girl worth monetarily.

One piece of advice I got once was to contemplate my actions from the perspective of the jury who would have to hear the case. If you cannot figure out how to explain what you did in a way that makes guilt or responsibility or justification a question, then you are better off just forgetting all about it.

D

[Horizon]

Yes, how much "intent" has to be proven in civil court? Was the true intention of the defendant to have the young girl die? Or was she just trying to belittle the girl and hurt her feelings/emotionally? People say to other people everyday that they should kill themselves so the world would be a better place. How many of those people actually want that to take place and how many are just saying those words to hurt the other person's feelings? This girl did kill herself. But hindsight is always 20/20. Was that the true intent of the defendant?

I'm not defending the actions of the woman in question. I think it was despicable. But I think any court would have a tough time proving that the intent of this woman was for this child to actually kill herself. This is a slippery slope for courts to go down.

[John Satclaire]

Originally Posted by Drum

I don't think it would be that hard in civil court. An intentional action with no other reasonable utility other than to cause another a general harm? I don't think I would have any problem inspiring the natural vengeful tendencies of the jury (as evidenced by some of the responses here).

There is no question of identity of the defendant or what the defendant's actions actually were. The only issue real issue would be how much was the little girl worth monetarily.

One piece of advice I got once was to contemplate my actions from the perspective of the jury who would have to hear the case. If you cannot figure out how to explain what you did in a way that makes guilt or responsibility or justification a question, then you are better off just forgetting all about it.

D

All true, but you need to at least be able to allege all the elements of a facially plausible cause of action, or the judge (or his superior, on appeal) will kick the case before the jury gets to exercise their mindless passions upon the defendant's bank account.

Here, there are only words spoken in the very impersonal, remote context of an online message board. I haven't run down the black letter law on intentional infliction of emotional distress, but it might serve to get this case before the jury. But that's about all I can think of, and the harm isn't the death, it's whatever emotional distress she suffered before she hanged herself.

"Wrongfull death" isn't a general tort unto itself as I recall it: this woman cannot be alleged to have caused the girl's death--the girl's hanging herself was the sole proximate cause of her death. So, the only thing for which the jury can award, no matter how much it might like to award for all sorts of things, is the emotional anguish, caused by the defendant's words, that led to the suicide. If they're stuck with negligent infliction of emotional distress, plaintiff is probably screwed: that harm, translated to money, won't be much after remittur and/or appellate review. If they can get intentional infliction, and get some punitives thrown in, maybe they'll make more.

But again, the end result is that the defendant can only be made to pay for the emotional harm suffered by the girl because of her words, from the time she was harmed until the time she strung herself up. When the jury tries to make the defendant pay for the harm of the death, the judge or an appellate court will compare the massive amount of money awarded with the legal definition of the defendant's liability, and either prune down the award, or throw it out as error ("no reasonable jury could find on these facts that...").

Sometimes, our ability to shaft plaintiffs amazes even me

[Christian Nelson]

Of course, you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip either, which is why the vigilante response could work out. No other options available.

Not many fathers would be able to stand by and not do anything to this woman.