Court Opinion

ID: 9740680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:40:17.599098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:19.717909
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring).
In totally joining the majority opinion, I do not believe that it holds that permitting a child to operate a farm tractor renders an employer strictly liable; rather, the employer’s liability attaches once the jury finds the statute has been violated, i.e., that the occupation was dangerous to the child.
As I review Dusha, cited in the majority opinion, expressing that children “are likely inappreciative of risks and prone to be careless and heedless,” it becomes obvious to me from whence this thought is born: Children should be prohibited from being labor lackeys in industry and commerce.
One by one the children died. Industrial Revolution. Social change. Laws changed. Enlightenment. Punish immaturity? No.
A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
William Wordsworth (1770-1850),
Poet laureate of England [We Are Seven]
And of Tyler Strain, what of him? And children of his age? Should they not be protected by the enlightment of an advanced society?