She was a widow with a 19 yr old son who dropped out to college and moved back in with her.
Of course, he had no job, and was a goofy kid..
anyway, one night he went drinking with his friends and ended up with a DUI and a vehicular manslaughter charge when someone in the car he hit, died.

SHE was sued by the family and ended up losing her house

He ended up in jail, and her life was ruined because she had to hire HIM a lawyer and then herself one too..

So at 50-something, she went from debt-free with a paid off house, to going back to a shitty rental apartment, a kid in jail and a mountain of debt.

Our sons were very mad at us when we made them pay for tiptop insurance and part of our 1M personal liability policy we bought..and one of our kids (our son who was nothing but trouble as a teen) we would not even let him get a drivers' license while he lived under our roof..

How is SHE responsible? Cases like this are what gets people to back court reform. She should have appealed, but that may have been hard to afford for her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligent_entrustment

Negligent entrustment is a cause of action in tort law that arises where one party (the entrustor) is held liable for negligence because they negligently provided another party (the entrustee) with a dangerous instrumentality, and the entrusted party caused injury to a third party with that instrumentality. The cause of action most frequently arises where one person allows another to drive their automobile.

... was goofy and stupid?

thx in advance

People get sued for loaning their guns to other people, yes.

As for knowing the propensities of someone, then one assumes that a parent would know the propensities of their child.

The problem with sales is that a seller generally doesn't know much about the purchaser, but negligent entrustment is one of the exceptions to the PLCAA.

In the event you weren't aware of the Sandy Hook situation...

https://www.cnn.com/2015/03/14/us/connecticut-sandy-hook-lawsuits/index.html

"Unlike our case against Bushmaster, Camfour (the distributor), and Riverview for the negligent entrustment and marketing of combat AR-15's designed for the military to inflict mass casualties against the enemy to civilians like Nancy Lanza, we expect this claim to be resolved quickly," attorney Josh Koskoff said of the estate lawsuits.

If he was diagnosed with mental issues or had several DUIs in the past, thats a different story. But its hardly negligent to loan an average 19 yr old son your car.
Whats done is done, but i think the poor lady got screwed really bad. Seems her homeowners ins would cover it too. But then thats why i have my home in the name of an LLC; unreasonable lawsuits. If anyone does sue me, the home does not belong to me.

The car wasn't loaned to an "average 19 yr old". It was loaned to a particular 19 yr old whom neither you, nor I, know anything about.

That is why we have things like courts, trials, juries, etc., to get at the facts of things like this.

Negligent entrustment doesn't require a "diagnosed condition".

"If he was diagnosed with mental issues or had several DUIs in the past, thats a different story."

Again, you clearly know more about these people than I do.

All kinds of facts may make a negligent entrustment claim a good one or a bad one. As for your plan to operate a single member LLC as a personal instrumentality for the stated purpose of avoiding liability, good luck with that.

That poster didnt say anything other than the kid was "goofy". Based on that, it seems she got the shaft. Could there be other info that would change that opinion? Sure. Maybe the poster would tell us. regardless, it is what it is.

And as for the LLC, that will work for anyone. The protection of an LLC can be pierced, but it rarely happens. Usually it happens when you commit fraud as an officer or commit a crime while acting on behalf of the LLC.
Most lawyers will look at someones assets before they take a civil case too. I'm a tenant. Few lawyers are going to dig into who is an officer of what LLC.
But you've reminded me i need to do some updating. Thanks.

I don't know why you are telling me what "most lawyers" do in various situations. I guess "most lawyers" are like the "average 19 year old". This lawyer, however, has seen plenty of people who have been misguided by their own legal theories into believing a personal LLC renders them judgment-proof.

If you personally own the LLC, then all you have done is to reduce your ownership of the house to your ownership of the LLC.

It was because he lived with her, and was on her auto insurance..

I don't know if it was "his" car.. I only met him shortly before he went to college, and he was goofy only because that's the way MANY teenagers behave...mine included..

I remember our insurance agent telling us that if we had teens driving, and we had anything of value, we NEEDED to protect ourselves,, we did.she didn't

That is utterly correct.

I mean, you can LEGALLY insure a car in the State of Delaware for:

Bodily Injury Liability Coverage: $15,000 per person and $30,000 per accident. Property Damage Liability Coverage: $10,000.

That's insanely low, if you think about it. You think you are going to accidentally KILL someone and they are going to walk away with $15,000 and call it done? Not if you have a house.

It is a simple matter of course that the owner of a car is included in a negligent entrustment claim whenever someone is injured in a collision by a driver of the car who is not the owner of a car.

My son, who was at the time otherwise employed as a driver by his employer, managed to run a red light and hit another vehicle with my car while he was not working.

OF COURSE, I was included as a party to the plaintiff's claim, on a negligent entrustment theory. The facts required to at least make the claim for the purpose of an initial filing are pretty simple (a) was that your car? (b) did you let them drive it? (c) did they get into a collision that was obviously their fault?

There is absolutely nothing unusual about being sued if someone kills somebody with something you loaned them, whether it is a car, a gun, or anything else for that matter. Whether it was reasonable to have loaned that thing to them, is something that will be fodder for a trial of all the facts before a jury.

Yah, many teenagers are "goofy". By the time discovery is complete into why he dropped out of college, didn't have a job, and was out getting drunk, along with every irresponsible thing he's done since being licensed to drive, and all of that is put before a jury, they're going to think it was outright lunacy to let him drive a car.

In an alternate universe, on another forum, someone is going on about the horribly irresponsible woman who let her crazy child run loose with a car and ended up killing someone dear to them. It all depends on whose friend happened to be whose.