Contributory negligence

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Contributory negligence, a legal doctrine found in many jurisdictions, enables financial compensation for victims of legal wrongs to be reduced where courts decide that those victims are partly to blame for their own injury/loss.  The classic example of this is a pedestrian who crosses the road without checking for safety and is then hit by a car.  

While it is currently an under-researched area throughout jurisdictions, legal decisions about childhood contributory negligence have broader implications for how the law conceptualises the developmental stages of childhood and, ultimately, how law and society engage with children themselves.