Most personal injury attorneys know that sometimes, an accident is all about a chain of events. That’s exactly what a jury found this year when they determined that the father of a 12-year-old driver who died as the result of a car accident he caused was negligent in teaching his son to drive illegally on public roads. The Daily News reports it appeared to be a case of oversimplified causation. In other words, but for Loren Fry teaching Jake Fry to drive illegally, the circumstances that led up to his wrongful death might not have occurred. The situation itself, however, is a slightly more complicated one.
Jake Fry died on February 27, 2007, and his father was actually nowhere near the car when the accident occurred. In fact, his son was driving a 1993 Ford Taurus belonging to his father’s girlfriend, Kelley Hill. She was in the passenger seat at the time of the crash, and her 12-year-old daughter was also along for the ride.
No one, except for those in the car at the time, knows exactly what happened. But this jury didn’t think it mattered, since they concluded Loren Fry was actually more at fault than Hill. More than likely, the jury rationalized that by teaching his son to drive illegally, Loren Fry created a foreseeable risk that his girlfriend might do the same. Perhaps she had been in the car during one of their driving lessons. Maybe allowing Jake to drive without his father in the car was something she had done before. It’s even possible that Loren Fry had given her permission to do so.