Only a lawyer could see the “Home Alone” movies as “unequivocally normalising family violence and dysfunction, by putting forward, as a role model, a child well under the age of criminal responsibility”. Enter HUGH SELBY with this fun, Christmas column.

EACH November our editor disarmingly tells us writers the deadline for Christmas and New Year articles.

This year it was 11 days out from that joyous day when presents are expected, eating too much is a given, and a few people remember that the day celebrates the birth more than 2000 years ago of a man who, whatever one’s religious beliefs, lived a life of admirable values.

So admirable that one of his gang betrayed him so that he could be strung up alive as a lesson to those who defied the elite of his times. But that’s the Easter story and today Christmas is our focus.

I doubt that you could have any idea how hard it is to find anything uplifting, let alone entertaining, that links the law to Christmas. Thanks to Dickens, I had an easy time of it last year: retelling the story of Scrooge and his lawyer descendants.

But this year, oh dear, the agony of finding a theme. An idea would come, its brilliance so clear, only to be dashed with mis-starts, dead ends, and journeys that began with hope and ended with despair. I came to hate my editor (steady there, Hugh – Ed).

And then, there it was: the first two “Home Alone” films, both very successful American Christmas-season comedies from the early ’90s.

To set the scene, let’s recall the stories, with thanks to the ever-helpful Wikipedia.

‘Home Alone’ (1990) 

Eight-year-old Kevin is the youngest of five children who is frequently bullied by his siblings. 

He wishes that he had no family when his mother is punishing him. She warns him to be careful what he wishes for. He wakes up the next day to discover that he is the only one left in the house. He thinks his wish came true and that he is finally alone, without his obnoxious family. 

His family are on a holiday trip without him. Go figure. So, home alone, he singlehandedly deals with Harry and Marv, a pair of robbers. Kevin fills the house with a collection of homemade booby traps. He manages to trap the robbers and they get arrested, just as his family returns home. 

‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’ (1992)

Set one year after the events of the first film, Kevin loses track of his family at the airport when he gets on a plane headed for New York, while the rest of his family fly to Florida. How can this happen?

Alone again, intrepid Kevin cons his way into a room at a top hotel, buys exorbitant amounts of junk food and rents a limousine. 

When Kevin discovers that Harry and Marv are on the loose again (they are dedicated, but loser recidivists), he stops them from stealing charity money from Duncan’s Toy Chest on Christmas Eve by using his proven skill set: booby traps.

Neither of these films could be made today: unequivocally they not only normalise family violence and dysfunction, but they put forward as a role model a child – well under the age of “criminal responsibility” – who combines highly developed talents to make injury causing gadgets with a personal resilience that would cause most teenager viewers to feel hopelessly inadequate.

Those traits and outcomes are unacceptable today. 

I haven’t checked, but I suppose that current replays of these films on TV or streaming services carry the warning that “some events will be distressing to some viewers. Help and advice can be obtained from… etcetera”.’

That’s just the start of the regulatory and litigation challenges raised by these films. 

Since this family can afford annual, distant holidays they are not eligible for legal aid and therefore must pay full freight to eager litigators. They might choose to reduce both their annual living costs and legal fees by acquiescing in Kevin leaving their family.

After all, the child-protection authorities would be investigating the adequacy of the parenting skills shown by young Kevin’s mum and dad.

They show repeated lack of awareness of the whereabouts of their youngest, as do his four older siblings. 

The authorities might opt to start proceedings that it is in his best interests to be removed from these blood relatives, one and all. 

Alternatively, Kevin, now 10 and reaching for 11, might decide that he would be better off without his family. There is an American court decision, from 1992, much publicised at the time, in which a 12-year-old boy persuaded a court to sever his ties to his mother and allow him to be adopted by other adults.

But wait, there’s more. An airline allowed Kevin, a child with dangerous know-how, on board alone, aged 9. There’s no sign of an adult carer, no valid identity document or boarding pass. 

The airline has been grossly negligent, so much so that some passengers develop not only post-event irreversible trauma but untreatable flight phobia. Naturally, they sue the airline. As they say, the sky’s the limit, and never more so than in class actions.

Truly a bag of big fee opportunities, so a very Happy Christmas to all our litigation lawyers.