64 Comments

No, it is not. we draw lines in levels of culpability all the time.

Your contention is that the owner of the car “allowed” the car to be stolen. The only way to prevent a car from being stolen is to lock it up like Fort Knox.

there is a reason why it is said that the slippery slope argument is fallacious, and i have demonstrated why in this particular case. You can limit liability to the reckless and stupid.

You have only demonstrated that the slippery slope would apply in this case. After all, if in your opinion it is reckless and stupid to leave a car with the keys in it, then someone else who wants to go after the deep pockets will claim that it is reckless and stupid to turn off the engine, take the keys but not lock the car. Then someone will say that not having an alarm system is reckless and stupid. It goes down that slope from there.

Furthermore, if the state would have wanted to carve out a limited liability statute, they would have. As it is, not only is there no statute that says the car owner is liable, but there is no law in that state which makes what he did illegal.

I ask again…… in this case where 3 of the four people were breaking the law are you wanting to hold the only legally innocent guy liable for what happened?

And no, you have not shown that cars are not uniquely dangerous. you have claimed it. and i will leave it to everyone else to decide whether a vehicle that can fly down the road at over 100 mph and weighs around half a ton, is the same as a DVD player.

Your point seemed to be that the car and gun were unique in that they were able to injure someone. Now that that has been shown to be false, you seem to be changing your point. Either way it really doesn’t matter. You can kill or hurt someone with a DVD player.

To further show the fallacy of your argument, you state that the car is unique because it can fly down the road at 100 mph. That would mean that the car was being used illegally. Just as using a DVD player as a weapon is not it’s intended, legal use, the car in this case was illegally obtained, and then driven by an illegally intoxicated individual. The person who was using the car in the legal manner is the guy who you want to add blame upon.

(It has not escaped notice that you have ignored the example of a stolen hammer from Lowes that is used to kill someone. Is Lowe’s then responsible since the hammer was not under lock and key?)

The standard in most civil cases is the preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

I can live with either standard in this case as the preponderance of the evidence shows, as well as being “beyond resonable doubt” that the car owner acted in legal and lawful manner.

Methinks, A.W. (“Awfully Wrong”?), using what you pass for “logic”, that you would say you’d pay up if:
>> You leave your credit card or checkbook behind at a business;
>> Someone else then takes that card or checkboook;
>> Cleans out your checking account–or runs the card to its limit–and that someone is then arrested for theft; and
>> You don’t realize that you left the card or checkbook until the next day.
Why? Because, according to Awfully Wrong, you–the card owner or account owner–were “negligent” by leaving the checkbook or card behind and not realizing it until later. So, as the owner of the account or card, YOU are the one charged with theft.
Man alive, the credit card companies would make a fortune off of you.

This has been an extremely interesting comments section, but let me remind participants of the need to be polite and respectful. Those who have been active in the discussion here probably agree in the main on all sorts of other issues — which makes it all the more interesting, of course, that sharp differences would emerge on this one. That shouldn’t stop us from conducting ourselves in a friendly way.

Gitar,

> Your contention is that the owner of the car “allowed” the car to be stolen. The only way to prevent a car from being stolen is to lock it up like Fort Knox.

I’ve already said it. You can draw lines. You can say you can’t make it easy for them, without saying you have to lock it up like ft. knox. There is a rational difference between the two and the law draws that kind of line all the time. So I consider your point already addressed.

> then someone else who wants to go after the deep pockets will claim that it is reckless and stupid to turn off the engine, take the keys but not lock the car

Yes, anyone can argue whatever they want. But they won’t win. The judge would literally dismiss it himself, if my approach is followed.

> Furthermore, if the state would have wanted to carve out a limited liability statute, they would have.

I honestly don’t know if they have. I am not pretending to know NY State law. I am saying from a policy perspective, this is a good idea. I am saying that regardless of what the law is, this is what the law should be.

> I ask again…… in this case where 3 of the four people were breaking the law are you wanting to hold the only legally innocent guy liable for what happened?

So now you are blaming the victim of the car accident. You know for drinking as a teenager. I am sure you never did that, right?

Like as if the fact he wasn’t of legal age to drink has anything to do with it. I mean even if somehow he drunkenly contributed to the accident (and we don’t know one way or the other on that point), the fact he was a teenager has nothing to do with that fact; it was merely the fact he was drunk.

And notice you use the word “legally” before the word innocent. Why? Because even you can’t defend this idiot car owner from moral culpability.

> Your point seemed to be that the car and gun were unique in that they were able to injure someone.

No, that is not what I said. And it is so clearly not what I said that I question whether you even read everything I wrote. So I will consider this asked and answered.

> Just as using a DVD player as a weapon is not it’s intended, legal use,

Um, its not illegal per se to use a DVD player as a weapon… Like if a guy is coming at you with a knife and you happen to be holding a DVD player and whack the guy in the head, that’s self-defense and legal. I’m not saying that is easy, or that a DVD player is a good choice of weapon, but it isn’t illegal.

> The person who was using the car in the legal manner is the guy who you want to add blame upon.

Well, what you really mean there is that he is not violating the criminal code. But whether it is legal or not is currently being decided. You can be sued for doing many things that are not criminal. For instance, if a man drops a hammer off of a high-rise accidentally and it harmed someone, unless he was being grossly negligent, in most jurisdictions that is not a crime. But it would almost certainly be considered negligent and he could be liable for the damages.

Here’s the big picture. The law of torts, which is what we are talking about here, is about figuring out who should foot the bill. One of the most elementary ideas in the law is that those who could avoid the costs should pay the costs and we increase the likelihood of suit the less we like the behavior. So take my break down of what the law says on animals last time. We like dogs, we think they give people a positive benefit. So in most jurisdictions if a dog not known to bite, the owner is not liable the first time someone gets bit. By comparison, we think it is indulgent and fairly dangerous to keep a tiger. So many jurisdictions say, “okay, you can keep it, but if he gets out and hurts anyone you pay.” That way when a person decides whether or not to buy a tiger, that person has to rationally weigh the cost of keeping the tiger caged v. the cost of the lawsuit if the tiger hurts someone. Imagine if we had a different rule? Imagine if we said, you can keep the tiger and if it gets out and hurts someone, you can’t be sued? Then a person would have no financial motive to control the tiger at all. They could literally let it run around the neighborhood off-leash, inflicting damage on everyone else without consequence.

When you decide whether to leave your car running or not, I want you to ask yourself “is my convenience worth the risk of theft and even a lawsuit if the thief hurts anyone else with it?” Why? Because I don’t want people to leave their car running (at least outside of Alaska), and one of the reasons why is that when the car is stolen there is a good chance an innocent can get hurt. Why make it easy for the thieves? Especially because not every person has the skill to hot wire a car, and if you are just going in and out of a store (as the defendant allegedly was, here), the thief might not have had enough time to pull it off. The behavior is indefensible. It is morally wrong to leave your keys in the car as it runs, and one of the reasons why it is wrong is because you dramatically increase the chances of it being stolen, and if stolen, you have no idea what that thief is going to do with your car.

And then there is the issue of the police having to take up their resources to capture your car, when they could be doing more important things, or if they have nothing more important to do, they could appropriately reduce the police force. That’s a cost all of us bear when a person chooses to leave their car running, too. I am remind of the John Stossel piece recently that argued that if you keep doing dangerous things in our national parks, requiring you to be rescued by the park rangers, you should have to pay for that. You want these reckless car owners to make it so easy to steal their car, any idiot could do it (even our current vice president), and then when the police have to take time to track it down, I the taxpayer has to pay, and if the thief runs down an innocent person, that innocent person has to pay (unless the thief is rich), too, oh and might be disabled for life to boot. Or dead. And if that innocent person is disabled for life, and goes on social security disability, then I have to pay for that too; and even if not, we lose some of that person’s productivity. Now I am myself disabled so I know its not the end of the world, but there is no question that there is a loss when a person becomes disabled. All that paying, when we know for a fact that a car is much more likely to be stolen if you leave the keys in them. It is such a simple thing to take your keys with you, and it avoids a ton of costs and misery in our society. Why exactly should we let these idiots off the hook for all the misery they could have prevented by doing such a simple thing?

Melvin

I never said the car owner should be tried with theft. I suggest you actually read what I say instead of constructing a straw man, or else I am afraid your analysis will be Always Wrong. 🙂

A.W., you say you can draw the line. All right, where do you draw the line and can you be sure it will stick? And suppose I want to draw the line at the criminal bearing all responsibility for his illegal action, you wish to draw it at someone who leaves the motor running and a third person who wants to draw it at someone who parked his car on the street instead of putting it in a garage? And someone else who wants to draw it even further down the line? And someone who wants to draw it at someone who can pay for the poor boy who was killed and the thief has no ability to pay?

There are only two clear positions in this spectrum, both at the extreme edge. Everything else is vague and subject to interpretation and uncertainty. Law needs to be simple so that the layman can live life with some certainty. Show me some way of fixing your intepretation so that it will lways apply and I’ll discuss it as a reasonable alternative. ut there are no reasonable alternatives. Alas.

Bob

ob

Bob

If your problem is vague laws, you have a lot more laws than this one to worry about. Which actually is a genuine concern, by the way.

And of course you can write the law specifically. If you find a law saying that if you are reckless in regard to your car’s security as too vague how is this:

> If an automobile is taken by a thief, where that that taking is aided to any degree by the fact that a person recklessly failed secure said automobile, and the thief then negligently, recklessly or intentionally harms a third party by striking that person with that vehicle; then the person who recklessly failed to secure said automobile shall be liable to that third party shall be liable for any and all damages owed by the thief to third parties related to such negligent operation of the vehicle (as determined in a court of law) that the thief fails to pay and the person who recklessly failed to secure said automobile shall have the right to recover all amounts paid under this statute from said thief. For purposes of this statute, a “third party” is a person who is not inside the vehicle, and is not the person who recklessly failed to secure the automobile; a “thief” is a person who doesn’t have the permission of the owner of an automobile to operate it and is not granted the legal right to operate such vehicle; a person has only recklessly failed to secure the vehicle if that person either 1) leaves the ignition in an unlocked state whether by leaving the key in the lock or by allowing the automobile’s ignition to lack a locking mechanism, or 2) by locking the ignition but leaving the keys to that lock inside the vehicle; and the singular shall include the plural and the plural shall include the singular.

It’s a mouthful, I will grant you, but what it means is that you are only liable if the following happens:

The car is taken by a thief (basically anyone who doesn’t have a permission or otherwise the legal right to take the car)
And the keys were in the car (or there isn’t even an ignition lock)
And the fact the keys were in the car aided in the theft (so if you left the keys under the seat, but the thief didn’t realize and hotwired your car, you are off the hook)
And the thief negligently, recklessly or intentionally harmed someone else using the car (so the thief has to harm a person with the car and has to harm someone who didn’t voluntarily get in the car with the thief)
And that person who was hurt sues the thief and gets an award of money
And the thief doesn’t pay all of it (and usually they won’t pay any of it)
Then the person who was hurt can sue the person who left the keys in the car for all amounts unpaid, and
The person who left the keys in the car can go and get that money back from the thief if it is possible (and as a practical matter, it usually won’t be)

I prefer a much simpler statement that you have a duty to secure your car and you recklessly fail to do so you are liable. Most juries will understand exactly what that means—things like leaving your keys in it, having your ignition completely unlocked, etc. but if you don’t want any uncertainty, I wouldn’t say my proposed statute is perfect but it is a pretty good stab at it, and with a few tweeks it would focus on this exact problem pretty much like a laser beam.

And i will add the limitation i admitted a long time ago. This law shouldn’t be passed in Alaska, because it sounds like there is an actual need sometimes to leave a car running due to the extreme cold. But in the lower 48 and hawaii? i think its fine.

I’ve already said it. You can draw lines. You can say you can’t make it easy for them, without saying you have to lock it up like ft. knox. There is a rational difference between the two and the law draws that kind of line all the time. So I consider your point already addressed.

Yet as has been shown, the lines can and do shift. What is to say that some person won’t think that not locking the car is stupid just as you think that leaving the car running was stupid?

Yes, anyone can argue whatever they want. But they won’t win.

They shouldn’t win suing the car owner either if common sense is applied.

I am saying from a policy perspective, this is a good idea. I am saying that regardless of what the law is, this is what the law should be.

And as you can see, the majority of people here disagree with you. One shoudl not hold the innocent victim of a crime accountable for the actions of a criminal.

So now you are blaming the victim of the car accident. You know for drinking as a teenager. I am sure you never did that, right?

I was never intoxicated under the legal drinking age. I can say that because I never consumed alcohol under the legal drinking age. In fact, I have never been intoxicated, buzzed, tipsy or anything close to it. In other words, your legal and moral relativity fails here as well.

I am not blaming the kids for being drunk. Yet it is unfathomable how you are blaming the other victim in this crime. You dismiss his being a victim.

If the car kids were doing something that is illegal, then certainly their culpability is greater than the legal actions of the car owner.

And notice you use the word “legally” before the word innocent. Why? Because even you can’t defend this idiot car owner from moral culpability.

No, I used the term “legally” because it is indefensible what you are proposing this man is supposedly “guilty” of. He is the victim of a crime – morally and legally – the car owner is a victim. He is not morally or legally culpable for anything that happened.

No, that is not what I said.

Here is your quote: “they are both uniquely dangerous in their own respects.”

The problem is that if you say that a car and a gun are unique in their ability to harm someone, that has been shown to be false. The fact of the matter is that all objects have the ability to be dangerous. Most of the time they are dangerous in a “unique” way. So I am happy with whatever you are trying to say. No matter what, it is false.

The rest of your writings is just more of your attempt to justify your position. Unfortunately, you fail in this regard. The car owner did nothing morally or legally wrong. You want to hold him accountable simply because he has the deeper pockets and because you feel that his legal and moral actions are somehow more culpable than those who were breaking the law.

Gitar

> Yet as has been shown, the lines can and do shift.

Well, by that logic, you can’t pass any law. If you are pro-choice, then you can’t even support a law against murder because it might slide down the slippery slope until abortion is illegal. But the pro-life side can argue that a law allowing for abortion might lead to the legalization of murder. Both positions, however, are silly.

> They shouldn’t win suing the car owner either if common sense is applied.

If common sense was applied, the car owner wouldn’t have left his car running in the first place. And common sense says that when a person has no common sense, and his stupidity causes another person pain or death, that paying for it is the least he should do.

> And as you can see, the majority of people here disagree with you.

And?

> I was never intoxicated under the legal drinking age.

Riiiiight.

> I am not blaming the kids for being drunk. Yet it is unfathomable how you are blaming the other victim in this crime. You dismiss his being a victim.

With what exact words did I say he wasn’t a victim? By all means, he has a cause of action for recovery of any cost or damage to his car, from the thief. Of course under your regime, his debt would be on equal footing with the person run over, so he would have an equal right to the money as a person who is in the hospital or dead. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

> If the car kids were doing something that is illegal, then certainly their culpability is greater than the legal actions of the car owner.

That’s not what the law says, and I agree with it. The illegality has to be related to why he got hurt in order to justify the damages. In this case, at most the drunkenness contributed but the fact he was underage? What on earth does it have to do with the case?

And, by the way, the fact he was drunk, even if he was of age, could be found to contribute to the negligence here. In some states that would eliminate his right to sue entirely; in most states, however, it just means he shares in part of the fault.

And that is not moral relativism. Of course they shouldn’t be drinking at that age. But just doing something wrong generally is not legally relevant; your illegal behavior has to be a contributing factor. That is black letter law.

And lets take the next two points out of order…

> The problem is that if you say that a car and a gun are unique in their ability to harm someone, that has been shown to be false.

Again, that is not what I said. Reread what I said until you get it. You have the right quote, but don’t comprehend my words.

> He is not morally or legally culpable for anything that happened.

So in your mind the car owner did nothing wrong?

Would you do what he did?

Well, by that logic, you can’t pass any law.

No, by that logic you shouldn’t hold people accountable for their legal actions when someone else does something illegal.

And common sense says that when a person has no common sense, and his stupidity causes another person pain or death, that paying for it is the least he should do.

We agree. Where we disagree is whether the car owner used common sense or not. The law says that he did. You say that he didn’t. The actions of the car owner did not cause death or injury to another. The actions of the car thief did.

Riiiiight.

Sorry that you don’t believe me. Not that it bothers me much other than to think that you are so locked into your view of the world that people actually didn’t drink in their teens. Sorry you believe that. It only reinforces that your opinion of what is “common sense” is skewed as “common sense” says that teens shouldn’t drink.

The illegality has to be related to why he got hurt in order to justify the damages. In this case, at most the drunkenness contributed but the fact he was underage? What on earth does it have to do with the case?

If the kids weren’t drunk, they would not have been walking to their destination on foot as they had driven to the party. Without being drunk, they wouldn’t have been in the path of the stolen car being driven by the intoxicated driver.

Its the same warped logic that you want to apply to the car owner. Blame the victims for the illegal actions of another.

Doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

Except for the fact that your point is not what I am saying, you are correct. It is unfair that you want the driver who legally parked his car to be held accountable for the illegal actions of another. Period. End of story.

Again, that is not what I said. Reread what I said until you get it. You have the right quote, but don’t comprehend my words.

Sorry, but your words and point at this point in time are incomprehensible. You keep trying to make the same point about guns and cars and it is continually shot down. If there is a communication error, it is on your end.

So in your mind the car owner did nothing wrong?

I’ll repeat for the fourth or fifth time as you seem to keep missing it:
He is not morally or legally culpable for anything that happened.

Got it now?

Gitar

> No, by that logic you shouldn’t hold people accountable for their legal actions when someone else does something illegal.

No, you are claiming that every time there is a slippery slope that we can’t pass any law in that area. So I guess we can’t make anything illegal, can never hold anyone responsible for their stupidity, because then we might go too far.

The fact is we avoid slipping down the slope all the time.

> Where we disagree is whether the car owner used common sense or not.

You think he was SMART to leave his car running?

> The law says that he did [exercise common sense].

The law is not purporting to say anything about common sense. And, if you take whether it is illegal or not to be a substitute for common sense, then many states do explicitly say it is illegal to do this. So its only stupid in certain states? And I don’t pretend to know what NY law says on the subject, but you have yet to show it doesn’t outlaw leaving your car running.

> “common sense” says that teens shouldn’t drink.

And when exactly did I say that teens should?

> If the kids weren’t drunk, they would not have been walking to their destination on foot as they had driven to the party.

Thus you miss my point entirely. First, you are now going to the Islamic courts view of things (if we can trust what another commenter said about that subject), that if you are hit, you are responsible because you happened to be where you were at that moment. But that is not how our courts have approached it. For instance, in one case a man was driving, over the speed limit, when a tree branch fell and struck the roof of his car. He sued the owner of the tree for negligence and the owner said he was contributorily negligent because he was speeding. The court ruled against the tree owner, saying that since the tree fell on top of the car (as opposed to in front of it), the speed of the car had nothing to do with the accident. In doing so, the court rejected the notion that the fact if he had been driving slower he wouldn’t have been in that place at that time makes him contributorily negligent.

And further, that only explains why being drunk makes them more likely to get hit, not why being a teenager who is drunk did so. Which is where you really miss the pont.

The question in causation, which is what we are talking about, is whether the negligent conduct is considered negligent because it will lead to those consequences. Speeding is dangerous because it gives you less time to avoid accidents, not because it causes things to fall out of the sky on top of your car. Likewise, drinking underage is bad because their brains are not fully developed, and this will warp that development. And leaving your car running is dangerous because any idiot can steal your car and run down someone.

> Sorry, but your words and point at this point in time are incomprehensible.

Yes, the term “uniquely dangerous” is so hard to read so that they cannot help but be understood as “unique because they are dangerous.” Seriously if you can’t understand the difference between the two, then I would have to ask if English is your first language.

> He is not morally or legally culpable for anything that happened.

That’s not what I asked. So I will repeat my question: “So in your mind the car owner did nothing wrong? Would you do what he did?”

If you punt on that question twice, we will all know what the answer is.

No, you are claiming that every time there is a slippery slope that we can’t pass any law in that area.

It is not about a slippery slope. It is about the fact that you want to hold a victim responsible for the illegal actions of a criminal. You keep talking about “common sense,” yet that is clearly contrary to all common sense.

You think he was SMART to leave his car running?

Shifting the goalposts, are we?

The law is not purporting to say anything about common sense.

Great. Now you are advocating a law that must be non-sensical.

Thus you miss my point entirely.

Sorry, but it addresses your point entirely.

And leaving your car running is dangerous because any idiot can steal your car and run down someone.

In other words, the cause of the accident is the guy stealing the car. I agree.

Seriously if you can’t understand the difference between the two, then I would have to ask if English is your first language.

You were the one that made the comparrison. When either interpretation was addressed, you now resort to an attack on my reading skills. First is was an attack on my honesty, and now this.

That’s not what I asked. So I will repeat my question: “So in your mind the car owner did nothing wrong? Would you do what he did?”

I repeat: He is not morally or legally culpable for anything that happened.

If you punt on that question twice, we will all know what the answer is.

Right. We all will know that you can’t deal with the answer given.

Gitarcarver the problem is that the car owner is legally responsible..

Bob

Gitar

> You keep talking about “common sense,” yet that is clearly contrary to all common sense.

You can call your position common sense all you want, but that don’t make it so. Indeed, the very fact that you are so terrified of 12 jurors deciding whether this driver did the right thing demonstrates that you are dealing with a very peculiar concept of common sense—one that you apparently believe is not very common.

> Shifting the goalposts, are we?

No, forcing you to talk about what you have dodged for days: that the driver was a frickin’ idiot. And as we are about to demonstrate at the end, you know it, too.

> Great. Now you are advocating…

Sorry, another straw man.

> Sorry, but it addresses your point entirely.

You can keep saying it over and over. It doesn’t make it true.

> In other words, the cause of the accident is the guy stealing the car. I agree.

But making it easy for the thief didn’t cause the theft? Didn’t even contribute? Not even a little bit? The chances of the car being stolen didn’t go up even a little bit because of the owner’s conduct? Making it really easy to commit the crime didn’t make it more likely to happen?

Most sane people recognize that many crimes are crimes of opportunity.

> you now resort to an attack on my reading skills.

Because you have misinterpreted plain English so much you have to wonder if you are impaired or dishonest. You have killed many straw men in this thread, which is either dishonest, or because you genuinely have trouble understanding my clearly stated positions. You literally never addressed my point on this issue, but said repeatedly you did. What am I supposed to think when you do that?

> [me] That’s not what I asked. So I will repeat my question: “So in your mind the car owner did nothing wrong? Would you do what he did?”

> [me] If you punt on that question twice, we will all know what the answer is.

> [you] I repeat: [blah, blah, blah, saying something other than yes or no to the question.]

So the answer is no and no. He did something wrong, and you would never do it yourself. But you don’t want to admit that, because then you would have to admit that the car owner himself wasn’t exercising common sense, and that thoughtlessness cost a young man his life. You don’t want to admit that because then you would have to admit that I am not off the wall for saying that the car owner should pay for the consequences of his own stupidity.

Sometimes its what you don’t say that is the most revealing.

At the risk of being arbitrary, I’m now going to close this thread. I think every relevant point on both sides has been made and the main effect is to get each other irritated. Thanks for some very thought-provoking discussion, though.