Very young children are not negligent for causing injuries | Sylvania, Ohio child accident lawyers

In many cases, children injure other children whether through play or some careless act.

Children under the age of 7 are not liable for their conduct as a matter of law. For example, if a child less than 7 years old injures someone by running into them with a bicycle, the injured person will not be able to succeed on a negligence claim against the child, no matter how severe the injuries.

The idea behind the rule is that children who less than 7 years old are simply incapable of fully appreciating how their acts may impact others. Therefore, the reasoning goes, it would be unfair to hold them responsible for injuries caused by accidental or even reckless behavior.

This can be an important issue if you a child under the age of 7 gets injured in an accident caused partially by the child’s actions. Under Ohio law, juries can weigh the negligence of the person who caused the accident and the injured person. The concept is called comparative negligence. So, let’s say that the driver of a car runs a stop sign at a 4-way stop intersection, and a 6-year-old child on a bicycle also fails to stop at the intersection and is struck while crossing the car’s path. In that situation, the 6-year-old cannot ,as a matter of law, be found to be contributorily negligent. Therefore, the driver of the vehicle would be solely responsible for causing the child’s injuries.

Children 7 or older - and adults, for that matter – also cannot be held liable for causing injuries that occur during recreational activities such as games of tag or baseball, unless their conduct was somehow reckless. In other words, a child who injures someone during some type of play activity won’t be held liable for a run-of-the-mill accident. And, the recreational activity doesn’t have to be confined to sports. For example if a child accidentally wacked someone with a hammer while building a tree fort, they likely couldn’t be found negligent. That may not seem fair to the injured person, but that’s the law in Ohio.

In some situations, a parent can be liable for a child’s negligent conduct. If the parent entrusts the child with something like a gun or a car that is potentially dangerous to others because of the child’s age or inexperience, a claim can be made against the parent.

Parents also can be liable if they don’t exercise the proper control over a child despite knowing that the child’s conduct could cause an injury, or if the parent somehow consents or directs a child’s wrongdoing.