Parents beware! You may be liable to pay for property damage caused by your child. Consider this scenario. When you are away at work on weekends, you usually have your 18 year old daughter babysit your 15 year old son so that he does not get into trouble. That arrangement is successful for a while but one day the 18 year old falls asleep on the sofa giving the 15 year old a unique opportunity. He takes the keys to the parents’ car, takes it for a spin, but gets into a car accident causing property damage to another car. The property damage is repaired through insurance. What can the insurance company do to recover the cost of the repairs? It can sue the parents in the small claims court. The lawsuit is governed by the Parental Responsibility Act which became law around 2000.
In this legislation, there is a reverse onus. Once the car accident has been proven, the parents must satisfy the court that they were exercising reasonable supervision over their son at the time that he took the car for a ride. The legislation lists several factors that the court may consider in determining whether the parents were exercising reasonable supervision at the time. Some of the factors are: the age of the child, the prior conduct of the child, the potential danger of the activity, the physical or mental capacity of the child, including any psychological disorders, and the parents’ parenting skills generally.
In defending the lawsuit, the parents might argue that they were completely unaware that their son had an interest in driving the car. The incident was completely out of character for the son and not foreseeable. The son was a normal healthy teenager giving no reason for the parents to be concerned about him engaging in any type of dangerous activity. The weekend regime established by the parents regarding the supervision of their son was prudent and reasonable and was working well before this incident.
The standard imposed by the Parental Responsibility Act is one of reasonableness, not perfection. The standard is an objective one determined by taking into account both the practical realities of what ordinary people do and what judges believe they ought to do. It is recognized by the courts that the reasonable person may make mistakes and errors of judgment for which there is no liability. The Act only applies to the small claims court with a monetary jurisdiction of $10,000.