The Widow’s Two Mites

Not everyone suffers the same harm from the “same” injury. Consider someone who already has lost some ability: mobility, strength, sight, emotional stability – who is then injured through another’s carelessness. Where before the victim was just getting by, now they are devastated. Wrongdoers (and their defense insurance companies) typically argue: “Wrecked before, wrecked after. No loss.”

Sometimes defense lawyers mislead the jury (even some judges) that the wrongdoer should pay less when he injures a fragile person.  They argue, in effect, that this wouldn’t have happened to an Olympic athlete, so it’s the victim’s fault for being hurt.

That is not the law.  The law is that whatever the objective injury, the victim is entitled to be compensated for their own particular injuries, harms, losses and expenses.  They do not get less because another victim could have jumped out of the way of the speeding car.  Nor because they had some back problems before this car crash.  Someone who can – just barely – look after herself before an injury and is made completely disabled by the injury, is not penalized for being old.  To poke out the eye of a one-eyed man is not the same as to poke out one eye of two.  The wrongdoer must compensate his victim for all her injuries, harms, losses, and expenses.  Not some.  All.

I remind judges of the law in every case.  I explain to a jury that a thief who steals water from a victim in the desert is more blameworthy than one who steals water at the oasis.  The loss is greater to the victim in the desert.  The thief can not get away by saying: “If my victim had been at the oasis, my theft would not have hurt him. It’s his fault for being in the desert, with barely enough water to be safe.”

Lawyers say: “You take your victim as you find him” or refer to a “thin skull”.  One judge in BC expressed it eloquently: “To rob a disabled person of what little she has left is a monstrous injury, for that little she has is, for her, the whole of her life.”

This idea is not a new one.  In the Gospel of Mark we see this story:

41 Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. 42 Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. 43 So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; 44 for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.”

When you hear of a person who causes injury, think of it as theft.  The victim had something taken from her, without her consent.  Now the thief wants to repay only part of what he stole.  And remember the widow and her two mites.