Oddities in "Renting to Teenagers" Case

There were a few things about the way this case (televised March 4th) played out that seemed a bit odd to me. This is the one where an older, genteel couple sued a gaggle of rowdy teenagers for trashing their rental property:

• I use the word "genteel" because the plaintiffs seemed to be a stereotypical old-fashioned upper-class couple. There are a million of 'em living in the "Main Line" suburbs outside of Philadelphia, PA-- and every other prosperous suburb, I imagine.

They seemed surprisingly clueless, though. I don't recall if they mentioned, or were asked, if they had kids of their own. But even if they did, and their kids (and their friends) were abnormally well-behaved, did they really not understand/expect that teenagers renting a place for a celebratory mini-vacation will trash the place?

Personally, I expected the actual damages to be far worse than they actually were. I speak as an innocent bystander to a 50-year old cold case, in which some teenager at an unsupervised New Year's Eve party let loose a quantity of undigested red wine all over an elegant new white living-room carpet. 😉

• I've seen other cases where someone related to the litigants and/or their testimony is sitting in the audience instead of participating; once in a while their non-participation is explained during the "trial". But I found it odd that "Mom" didn't join her daughter, and even odder that Judge Milian didn't drag her up to the witness stand on general principles.

I thought that at least the aptly-named Curt would buttonhole Mom in the hallway afterwards to grill her about the kids' snotty reaction to the verdict.

• And, did I miss something? Because when the case was over, I couldn't remember if they even got into a topic which they almost always address: how the defendants reacted when the plaintiffs notified them about the damages. It's par for the course that the goofy kids-- and the defendant's "witnesses" all looked way younger than 18-- would deny and otherwise try to weasel out of their culpability.

I got the impression that Mom drew a line with her 18 year-old daughter, and probably told her that she (the daughter) would have to handle the consequences without Mom's help. But the daughter didn't really offer a "defense"-- and her friends mostly shrugged and smirked and elbowed each other without even trying to "justify" why they didn't owe the plaintiffs anything.

This is one of those cases where normally, JM righteously unloads on the party (here, the defendant & company) who clearly behaved badly, and compounded the felony by making the plaintiffs go to the trouble of suing them. That's where I expected JM to involve Mom, and read them all the riot act.

I don't know why it went down like this, but it felt a little "off" to me.