“I’m sure that 87 year old woman didn’t appear out of nowhere. The mothers should have anticipated and warned their children to be careful.”
Are you a witness, because the article does not say if the elderly woman appeared out of nowhere or not. The point is that we live in a law-suit happy world. If these kids were racing their bikes down the sidewalk and the elderly woman stepped onto the sidewalk from a place were she could not be seen, then it might not be the kids’ faults.
If the mothers wanted the children to race their bikes, then they should have found a safe place to do it, or gone on ahead to make sure the coast was clear. The key word in sidewalk is “walk”. Sidewalks are for pedestrians.
She may even have jumped in front of them from a place of concealment, in a diabolical scheme to nab a pile of insurance money....
Seriously, though -- whether the old lady could be seen or not, there are generally laws against riding bikes on sidewalks, for this very reason.
Nobody argues that the kids didn't hit and injure her; and it is highly likely that the old woman's death was related to the injuries she suffered, and failure to recover from the subsequent surgery.
Are kids SUPPOSED to be racing bicycles on the sidewalk?