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In reply to the discussion: 5 year old's touch sends on-loan sculpture crashing to floor. Kansas City bills parents 132K [View all]meadowlander
(4,416 posts)We went to buy a car when I was six and my brother was five. My brother got into one of the cars, put it into neutral and because the car was parked on an incline it rolled back and hit another car parked behind it. My parents paid to repair both cars. They didn't stand around arguing about the fact that the car was on a slope, or that a five year old was able to move one because the emergency brake wasn't on or hey, what are all these cars doing here? They acknowledged that they brought a child into public and then didn't watch what he was doing carefully enough and that therefore they needed to pay up for the damage he inadvertently caused.
They probably did end up paying more than the actual cost of the repairs because they were so mortified but also because they wanted to set an example for us.
When I was sixteen I was taking classes at the community college and had to drive to them and the only place to park was in a gravel section with no marked spaces where you had to drive around a loop to get out. After I'd parked, someone else parked too close to the turn and when I tried to turn around them, I scraped their bumper and crushed in the side of my car. It was only some paint scratches on their bumper, but I left a note, the owner called and said the whole bumper needed to be replaced. And we paid for it - even though it took my whole summer's wages. Because when you damage someone else's stuff, even when you didn't do it on purpose, you take responsibility and cough up. You don't sue the community college for not having a paved parking area with marked spaces. You don't blame the other person for parking too close to the turn. And you don't sit around arguing about the bill when you are clearly at fault.