It’s always rubbed me the wrong way that parents can cause their children so much harm and so much distress, only to leave their children to pick up the pieces and clean up the damage once those children are grown up.

We don’t accept this sort of thing in other areas of life. If a person is driving their car recklessly, we expect that they (and/or their insurance) will pay for any damage they cause, including to other people. Why don’t we expect parents to clean up after themselves when they cause harm to their kids?

In my opinion, we should.

I am a student-at-law at Marrow Law, and anticipate being called to the Bar of Alberta later this spring. The law firm I work at supports, represents, and advocates for persons who have been mistreated in many different contexts; and I look forward to continuing that work once a lawyer myself.

While any legal advice will necessarily depend on, and require tailoring to, the individual facts of each person’s case, as a general matter I for one think it’s time that we as Canadians recognize a tort of parental negligence and empower abused children to seek monetary damages from their abusive caregivers. In other words: I think it’s time for children to start suing their negligent parents in court.

Don’t we already have that?

Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here.

In Canada, parental negligence has historically been assessed in terms of a parent’s liability for the actions of their children.

Nova Scotia’s anti-cyberbullying legislation—the Intimate Images and Cyber-protection Act, SNS 2017, c 7—is a case in point. Under that legislation, a person (or, if a child, their parents) who is the victim of cyberbullying by a minor in that province may take the parents of that minor to court and seek financial damages.

Similarly, in the seminal case of Floyd v Bowers, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice found parents liable in negligence when they left a pellet gun and ammunition unattended and their minor child used that gun and ammunition to harm another person.

When I talk about parental negligence here, I’m not talking about parents being found........

© rabble