The woman who sued her 8-year-old nephew for his reckless hug loses as the jury returns a verdict that "may have hinged on a plate of hors d’oeuvres."

"'We just didn’t think the boy was negligent,' said [a] juror, who declined to be identified as she left the courthouse."

“When you’re talking about young children, you’re talking about a subjective standard - not an objective standard,” [said Quinnipiac University law professor William Dunlap]. “The child is not required to conform his behavior to the way a reasonable adult is expected to behave.”...

Judge Edward Stodolink instructed the jury to consider what a “prudent” 8-year-old boy would have done when his aunt came to his birthday party. “Prudent,” the judge emphasized.

Is there such an animal as a "prudent 8-year-old boy"? I guess it means a boy as prudent as an 8-year-old can be... or is it a child as prudent as an 8-year-old boy can be? I'm not a Connecticut torts professor. I don't know how specific the reasonable person standard can be. Is the jury allow to say, maybe a prudent 8-year-old girl would no better than to leap into the arms of a 50-year-old-aunt, but 8-year-old boys, even at their most nearly prudent, wouldn't know any better than to leap?

But what was the role of the plate of hors d’oeuvres? The linked article is a tad deceptive in its teasing. It wasn't that a plate of hors d’oeuvres was the more proximate cause of the fall that broke the aunt's wrist. It was that the jurors might have been put off by her testimony complaining about the difficulty she still has holding a plate of hors d’oeuvres. I guess she should have envisioned something less snooty on the plate. A plate of cheeseburgers.

ADDED: Isn't "prudent 8-year-old boy" an objective standard?

AND: "The aunt who sued her nephew for damages said that she was forced to do so by Connecticut law when the insurance company only wanted to pay her one dollar."