I completely agree. Young boys, of that age, and they went exploring a bit and got busted. Their bullcrap story is what they floated to get themselves out from under it, and their old man bought it and decides to get sue-happy.
I hope the library or whoever it is fights this tooth-and-nail, and the dad not only loses/gets his suit tossed out of court,
but is on the hook for the court costs and generally wasting everyone's time.
You guys know me...I'm fairly conservative on many matters and am not much one for "everything goes, everyone can get offended and STFU", blah, blah. Usually I'm going to side with those on the more traditional, straight-laced, meat-n-taters side of things (and I don't apologize for it).
But this particular situation, to me, seems a pretty clear case of someone just wanting to make a fuss for little-to-no-reason. Even if the book
was legitimately in that section (I still doubt that), a) the two kids had to see the title/cover pic and STILL open it up to see it (hellooooo...does that not factor in somewhere in any of this?), and b) even if they did, all kidding aside, they're hardly "scarred for life". Worse thing that happened, they got a little aroused or saw something they'd never seen before.
Happens to me 50-65x a day...
A dad who wasn't a nutjob/pot-stirrer would simply explain to his sons what he thinks about this or that, and to maybe "be more careful in their library pursuits" if that's what he feels strongly about. But this "suing for $20,000" is 110% horseshit, and I hope the judge sees fit to order the bailiff to give this guy a smack or two.