New York Mother Sues City of Norwalk After Son Steps in Dog Feces

Kelly DeBrocky, of Mahopac, N.Y., appears to have a curious way of teaching her children by example. The New York mother is suing the Maritime Aquarium for $100 to replace shoes of her 1-year-old after he stepped in dog feces on an outing. She has also charged for her parking and admission to the facility.

Ms. DeBrocky recounts her harrowing tale in her complaint:

“After parking, we exited the garage and my 1-year-old son was walking around the structure outside the door of the garage and stepped in a large pile of fecal matter,” DeBrocky wrote. “I quickly picked him up and brought him to the aquarium and did my best to clean him up.”

“After a long car ride, it was not practical for me to immediately turn around and go back home with a small child. We had to pay for admission to the aquarium and my son had no shoes and it made the entire experience awful.”

Shocking. As the father of four, I have cleaned enough of this stuff to be certified as a waste management engineer. The problem with these frivolous lawsuits is that they give fodder for “tort reform” groups who insist that these are examples of why our legal system is out of control — just as they used the lawsuit against the cleaners for the missing pants for $54 million, click here. What they never mention is that these lawsuits are routinely tossed out and sometimes result in sanctions.

DeBrocky is obviously out of touch with either the law or reality or both. However, this is not a reflection on the legal system. Any system will attract people like DeBrocky. The test is not the fact that such lawsuits are filed but how the system addresses them.

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