Ranting About Injustice

I could be premature about all this, but I’m very pissed at a situation that happened yesterday. Herman and I have put our lovely home up for sale and yesterday, Sunday, was another of the many open houses that we have had over the last six weeks.

While we were gone and our agent was riding herd over a multitude of browsers, one couple came through the house and let their little boy run wild. The boy thought the sliding glass door was open (which it wasn’t) and ran into it head first, shattering the glass.

Luckily, the boy only received a small cut on his nose and no other obvious injuries. His father, a lawyer, left his card before taking his family on to the next house on their list.

Herman called for estimates this morning. Cheapest was $300 if we bring the glass door to them, with only a four-day wait. The most expensive was $575, but they come onsite and fix it here, with only a three-day wait.

The problem: Who Pays???

We called our insurance company, you know, those guys who take huge sums of money each month and give nothing in return. Their advice is for us to pay for it ourselves. EXCUSE ME? How is this our fault?

Their logic is, if we file an insurance claim just before moving, it will effect us getting insurance at our new home in Palm Springs, and will certainly drive the policy price up.

But now the interesting part comes in. They advise us not to try and make the parents of the kid pay because that might piss them off and they could sue us. Let me see if I got this straight, some jackoff brings his Tasmanian Devil into our home and lets him run wild, and because the boy gets a bloody nose, they can sue us?

Back in the day (fifty years ago) when children were seen and not heard, this would never have happened in the first place, because parents would have controlled their damned kids. But if the unthinkable did happen and the kid caused $300 of damage to a strangers house, the parents (at least MY parents) would have whipped out their checkbooks in a heart beat and covered the cost, then taken me to the car and given me a $300 spanking.

IMHO, that’s what a gentleman should do—cover the repair costs, apologize, and send a bottle of pricy wine to make up for any inconvenience to the home owners. Yet, everyone—Herman, the insurance company, the realtor—are all walking on eggshells worried that this lawyer will sue our pants off.

What has this society come to?