I found this shocking and also dangerous in the long run, people are getting used to surveillance might also accept it by the state.
Obviously those products exist (and probably do in Germany too) and I'm sure that parent who got in trouble was a real incident. Nonetheless those of us actually raising children in this country don't actually do that stuff. Chill.
Except the ones that are?
In Germany a court just ruled that a three year old can go alone to the bath room and their parents don't have to check on them. The child set the bath room under water and someone wanted the parents to be liable.
Also some years ago, I saw a video from a school parking lot, where the hundreds of pupils where dropped off by their parents. So instead of building several schools close to the pupils, they build one big school, to which almost no pupil come alone.
In denser cities, though, you do tend to see neighborhood schools instead of larger, more centralized schools.
This seems like a failure at city planning. Anyways shouldn't there be a school bus?
Other kids got dropped off and picked up by one of their parents, and, in retrospect, I imagine it was a convenience decision for everyone involved. For one, it probably meant everyone got to sleep half an hour or so later.
This has probably only become worse since then, since the trend seems to be toward people wanting ever larger houses with ever larger yards, thereby making everything even more spread out.
Come to think of it, it's no wonder kids have apparently started opting for staying at home and playing games online with their friends rather than getting together in meatspace. It's probably getting to be just too inconvenient to get together in meatspace.
Seems like the alternative is to declare the 3yo liable for the damage, which is absurd. Water like that can cause a lot of damage; it's not like they tipped over a glass on the table.
The judge said that the parents are not obligated to surveillance their child 24/7 in the flat as it would hinder the development of the child.
The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply ban unsupervised minors from the premises. They represent too great a risk to be tolerated in the absence of legal recourse for whatever damage they might cause.
The idea that having children should be treated as a strict liability tort is...unusual.
Without that treatment, the damages would need to stem from some other tort by the parent (such as negligence by failure to reasonably supervise), or a tort by the child with a rule that parents are liable for the children's torts.
> Someone has to pay for the damages, and it would not be sensible or just for that someone to be the owner of the damaged property.
That's who usually pays for damages not resulting from some failure of a legal duty, so I do think see why a child being involved would change that.
> The alternative to parental responsibility is that property owners simply ban unsupervised minors from the premises.
Well, that's an alternative, and a fairly common one where it's not fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of the property.
Yes, but that isn't what I was saying. "Having children" is not the tort. Damaging others' property is the tort. The parents are liable because it was their child that caused the damage. The child is their responsibility. What the child does, they did.
> or a tort by the child with a rule that parents are liable for the children's torts
Yes, exactly this.
> That's who usually pays for damages not resulting from some failure of a legal duty...
The legal duty which was failed in this case is the duty to not damage others' property. (You do have that, right? Or are property owners simply expected to absorb the cost of accidental damage no matter who was responsible?)
> Well, that's an alternative...
I argue that it is the only viable alternative. Why would property owners voluntarily accept liability for the actions of other people's children without some form of compensation? But we don't want this alternative, because it means 24/7 surveillance and stunted development—not out of legal obligation but simply because unsupervised children would have nowhere to go.
One doesn't have such a duty, otherwise we wouldn't have specific torts at all, you'd just jump straight to damages.
> You do have that, right?
No, the closest thing to that is general negligence, where you owe a duty of reasonable care. Damages resulting despite exercise of reasonable care (other than where a strict liability tort exists) do not generally create legal liability.
> Or are property owners simply expected to absorb the cost of accidental damage no matter who was responsible?
If no breach of a legal duty occurs that produces the accident, yes, people are, in general, expected to absorb damages.
> I argue that it is the only viable alternative.
But the argument you make for that position is inconsistent with the results in reality.
So your legal system does recognize a duty not to damage others' property.
I think it is safe to say that flooding the room is a good example of not taking "reasonable care".
> If no breach of a legal duty occurs that produces the accident...
Irrelevant, as we've already established that there was a legal duty which was breached.
> But the argument you make for that position is inconsistent with the results in reality.
Only if you start from the position that parents are not responsible for damages caused by their children, which is itself contrary to reality.
That's pretty much the US model, too; young children are unlikely to be subject to tort liability (under common law, there was a firm cutoff at 7 years for negligence, with a presumption against liability up to 14; now in most jurisdictions it's a balancing test of age, experience, and intelligence.)
And even where a child is liable, they are likely to be effectively judgement-proof and many jurisdictions have fairly limited provisions for parent liability for minors torts (California, e.g., has a quantitatively-limited amount of parental liability, for liability from willful misconduct.)
There may be some cases where there is a negligence action against parents for reasonable care in supervision, but it's not clear that the duty the would be judged that much differently than in Germany.
No. That's an alternative (though not a particularly sane one.) The other alternative is to accept that it's not always socially useful to give people someone to sue for every misfortune.
I've never done this but I imagine the reason would be to spot times when the teachers are abusive towards the children, not to ensure everything is perfect.