Stop having opinions!

Bawahahahaha.

I agree to a point, Chelle. The problem involves the question of intent. Lori Drew’s previous statements to law enforcement indicate that she didn’t specifically intend to cause physical harm to Megan, so that’s why the issue devolves into one about recklessness, as WG pointed out earlier.

As far as recklessness, the issue is whether Drew knew or should have known that Megan would kill herself after receiving those messages.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit since WG brought up the possibility of manslaughter charges, and one thing that dawned on me was a legal concept known as the eggshell skull doctrine.

In a nutshell, it means that a wrongdoer takes their victim as they find them: if they bop the person on the head with a pillow but, because person has a skull as thin as an eggshell, it proves to be a fatal blow, then the wrongdoer is STILL liable.

Although it can be used in criminal law, it’s mostly used in tort (civil) cases. In the criminal area, there seems to be a requirement that the initial action be unlawful.

The most commonly cited case for using this doctrine in criminal law involves a kid who kicked another. The victim had previously been injured and the kick exacerbated that prior injury so that the boy wound up losing his leg. The kicker was held criminally responsible for that loss since kicking another person is, in the first place, a crime of battery.

In the Megan Meiers case, there is NO law making it illegal for an adult to pose as a child on the internet (unless, of course, it involves other illegal acts). So perhaps that’s why prosecutors won’t be filing charges against Drew using the eggshell skull doctrine.

In a tort case, however, there’s no such requirement. The standards for filing a tort lawsuit based in negligence is:

- A duty of care
- Breach of that duty
- Breach causing harm in fact
- Breach being a proximate or not too remote a cause, in law

As for the duty of care, all people are required to exercise reasonable care that their actions do not cause foreseeable harm to others.

Proving a breach of duty requires the injured person to show that the wrongdoer failed to exercise reasonable care, i.e., that s/he knew or should have known the action could cause harm.

Breach of duty causing harm in fact means that the failure to exercise reasonable care must actually have caused harm. This is where the eggshell skull doctrine comes into play. In that case of the kid who kicked another, it was foreseeable that kicking could lead to a bruise when, in fact, it led to something worse. It’s sufficient to show that SOME kind of harm could occur, but there’s no requirement to show that the SPECIFIC harm was likely.

Breach being the proximate cause means proving that, but for the wrongdoer’s actions the harm would not have occurred. In the Drew case, that means showing that if Drew hadn’t sent hurtful messages to Megan, then Megan wouldn’t have tried to kill herself. That much seems rather obvious.

So, even though prosecutors can’t charge Drew with a crime, the Meiers’ family certainly has grounds for a civil lawsuit seeking tort damages.

The question is whether the satisfaction of hearing a jury pronounce Drew guilty will be enough reward, since it’s unlikely that any amount of money could compensate the family for their loss.

My oldest has been a victim of this kind of harassment, only it wasn’t coming from adults. She had accessed her account from somebody else’s computer, and they’d copied her keystrokes, got her password, and passed the information around. She was really upset at first, until I stepped in, started taking screen shots, immediately documenting everything, and in her presence putting together a folder of information about things. She is now quite a bit more cautious about her internet usage, and that’s a good thing.

There is a world of difference between gamers and geeks giving each other crap in and out of game, and an adult intentionally setting out to manipulate a child. Lori Drew is, in the end, going to get what’s coming to her – I’ve been following developments over at Death By 1000 Papercuts.

So I do see the viewpoint from both angles. The problem is that Lori Drew specifically set out to hurt a child that she knew had emotional problems in the first place.

Another thing with the internet is that if someone is continually harrassing you, there are ways to block them. Unfortunately, they can make numerous email addresses or screen names for whatever messaging program and take it up again. Megan didn’t expect to be harrassed by someone she thought was her boyfriend, which then in turn became everyone she considered her friends.

When someone is specifically setting out to hurt others, they should be punished, that’s all there is to it. Otherwise, parents can still be vigilant about what their children are doing on the internet and this includes reading their emails, logging their instant messages and keeping track of the websites they are visiting. It’s a pain, but if we are going to allow them access to the information highway, then we have to protect them any way we can.

Lori Drew did not know how Megan would react, no. That’s precisely my point – she could have known by virtue of the fact that their families were friends, they lived 3 houses away, and because she herself was engaging in an ongoing, intimate, personal series of exchanges with Megan by email and MySpace messaging. As the adult in the equation, it was her responsibility to ascertain the extent of her actions on Megan’s behavior, and she intentionally inflicted additional emotional distress on her.

After thinking about this, doesn’t this fit, without even credibly stretching the definition, the criteria for criminally negligent and/or reckless conduct, both of which are components of manslaughter?

Certainly Drew’s conduct was negligent. No reasonable person would believe it OK for a 47-year-old woman to pose as a boy and flirt with a young girl for the purpose of hurting her feelings.

But the next question is whether she wantonly disregarded the likelihood that her conduct would lead Megan to commit suicide. That’s a “knew or should have known” standard, and to some extent there’s a question about whether Megan’s response was reasonable, too.

I don’t know that Megan’s family will be able to convince a jury that Drew knew or should have known Megan would try killing herself after “Josh” dumped her, even IF she was on anti-depressants. (There’s no indication Megan had exhibited suicidal tendencies before, and the majority of spurned 13 y/o girls don’t react in that way.)

Which means that, in a couple of years, any serious snark on the Internet might be subject to prosecution.

That’s what happens when a single sordid incident, tragic as it is, dictates immediate legislation to placate people who feel as strongly as you guys do.