‘Tis the season to be jolly, make merry, and sing, “Deck the Halls with Poison Ivy” and the like. But on a serious note, we need to remember why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. “Silent Night,” “Joy to the World,” and “Away in a Manger” seem to be a more appropriate remembrance. I, for one, get misty-eyed whenever I hear “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Who wouldn’t? I just can’t hear that tragic, musical lament too many times. In fact, I have teardrops dripping on my keyboard now as I think of the family’s quandary about whether they should keep grandma’s gifts or return them. Truly heart-rending.
But soon, the gifts will become less important and liability for grandma’s death will come to the forefront. Who can the family sue for grandma’s untimely passing? In this hit-and-run incident it’s fairly obvious who was driving a small herd of reindeer, as evidenced by the hoof prints on grandma’s broken body; but there were no eyewitnesses. The evidence is circumstantial. Even if Santa is the person of interest, how do you get hold of him for questioning?
Would authorities have to wait until next Christmas season to find Santa and an elf or two at the mall listening to kiddies’ wishes and getting their pictures taken for five-plus dollars a crack? Would they assign a detective to sit on his lap and interrogate him? If Rudolph’s nose was bright enough to pierce the fog, why didn’t Santa see an old lady right in front of him? He’d probably blame her death on the reindeer or his cataracts. Santa holds the reindeer’s reins. The reindeer just go where he guides them. And if his cataracts were that bad, he shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. At least, it should have been noted on the back of his driver’s license. Does Santa even have one? Is he restricted to driving sleighs pulled by reindeer? Should he consider a new self-driving sleigh?
To delve deeper into the legal implications, we must consider in what state did this occur? Georgia has a law that says, “No owner shall permit livestock to stray upon…any property not belonging to the owner of the livestock…” So if the owner, in this case, is Santa, he can be sued for damages. Additionally, because reindeer are wild animals, Santa would be held strictly liable under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976. It’s a pretty safe bet that grandma was damaged. Ohio has a law called Comparative Negligence. If grandma was partly at fault, i.e., drunk from too much eggnog, it would reduce the fee of the damages to be paid by Santa, the alleged guilty party.
But what if grandma was completely wasted on eggnog and already had passed out and was lying in the snow in a drunken stupor? The reindeer and Santa, alleged perpetrators of the crime, may have thought the person of grandma was just a fallen log and not given it a second thought.
So many unanswered questions. I think Santa’s going to have a tough time blowing off his part in this one. In the end, there are no winners, unless you consider the family for the refunds they got on grandma’s gifts.