No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

So, instead of going to a party, a couple of teens decide to make cookies for their neighbors and get sued. The world is officially nuts. Something like this happens, you complain to their parents (or to the teens themselves, but perhaps with their parents present) and tell them not to knock on people’s doors and walk away so late at night. Thanks, but no thanks, please don’t do that again. You don’t sue them. Whatever happened to settling a disagreement out of court? Going to your neighbor’s house or picking up the phone and having a freaking conversation? Has the concept of community really deteriorated so much that we can’t even talk to someone without consulting a lawyer? Don’t we know how to interact with each other at all any more? So what’s next, people? A woman sues a man for sexual harassment because he holds the door for her? A child sues his parents for letting him have dessert? Pretty soon, we’ll be suing each other for invading our “personal space”.

And, yes, it was just the one woman out of at least seven people who received the cookies who sued. But it’s not just her. It’s her lawyer. And it’s the judge who handed down the decision. Really, there are much, much worse things those girls could have been doing at that time of night. There are also worse things they could have left on the woman’s porch. Rewarding this woman’s utter stupidity and paranoia just encourages more of the same – and discourages the kind of generosity these girls demonstrated. If doing positive things gets you into trouble, you might as well do the bad things. There is no point in being a decent person in a society that takes from the generous to give to the greedy.