The following is not
legal advice, nor is it intended to be legal advice, nor is it intended
to be used as legal advice. It is intended to entertain
you. If you need legal advice, please speak to a lawyer.
Good luck.
THE THIN SKULL RULE
As gruesome as it sounds, the "Thin Skull Rule" (and if that's not colorful enough for you, it's also known in some quarters as the "Eggshell Skull Rule") makes quite a bit of sense. The basic idea is that when you are responsible for an injury that someone else suffers, you are responsible for the entire injury -- it
doesn't matter if the nature or the extent of the injury is
unexpected. You must "take your victim as you find
him/her." For example, if you negligently cause a person to fall
to the ground, you are responsible for whatever happens as a result of
the fall -- whether it is merely a bruised rear end, or a broken pelvis
thanks to fragile bones. (The original example of the Eggshell
Skull Rule is, of course, the following: Person A foolishly but
playfully smacks Person B on the head because Person B is acting
like an idiot. Unfortunately for all involved, Person B is not
only an idiot, but he has a dreadfully thin skull. Person B's
head breaks, and everyone loses. Person B has a broken head, and
Person A may not defend the inevitable lawsuit with the statement, "But
I didn't mean to break his head, I just meant to smack him because he
was an idiot," because of the Eggshell Skull Rule. Person A will
be responsible for paying to Person B whatever the jury believes
to be the value of a broken head. And there's certainly an
argument to be made that Person A is also an idiot.)
Not
to be
outdone in the Unpleasantly Graphic Images Department, Canadian
courts have come up with a defense to the Eggshell Skull Rule known as
the "Crumbling Skull Rule." (I'm not
kidding.) The thrust of the Crumbling Skull Rule is that you
should not be held responsible for an injury
you caused to another person, if that injury was happening or was going
to happen to the other person anyway. (I guess the idea
would be that if Person A smacks Person B in the head leading to the
disappointing result described above, he could defend Person B's
lawsuit by claiming, "Even though I broke Person B's head, his skull
was already crumbling. I just happened to speed up the
process a bit.")
Lawyers are the
greatest, aren't they?
Come back next month when I talk about why Habeas Corpus is the one legal right you never want to use, but you never want to give up!
