Expanded Theories

In recent years, courts, state legislators, and clever trial attorneys have dramatically expanded traditional theories of negligence. As stated, negligence means a failure to exercise the proper degree of care. The question is what is the proper degree of care? How careful must we be?

Several years ago a famous rock group was sued by the parents of a teenage boy who was terribly injured when his suicide attempt failed. The parents claimed that the boy had been encouraged to commit the act by listening to certain lyrics on a record album. Although it was ultimately determined that the group was not liable for the boy’s death, the case did make it all the way through trial. The members of the group sat through countless hours of depositions and testimony and surely spent several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. All of this time and money were wasted, because an attorney for the boy’s parents attempted to connect a remote Deep Pocket Defendant to the case in order to obtain compensation for this unfortunate, but blameless event