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.