Should a teen have to pay $1700 for following an instruction her friend gave?

Although the teenager opened it at her friend’s request, the friend’s parents insist she should cover the entire $1,700 repair bill. Her family believes splitting the cost is the fairest solution, but neither side is willing to budge, leaving a decade-long friendship hanging in the balance.

I really get confused when situations that are so simple end up being a whole mess just because people don’t want to cooperate. In this case, the teen made a mistake and accidentally broke the sunroof in her friend’s car since she opened it manually, whereas she should have done it by clicking a button. Things happen, okay? This is nobody’s fault, and especially not this girl’s.

Now, what I do think is that the friend didn’t clarify how this feature was supposed to be opened. If this is her car (or her parents’) she should have some knowledge about this thing, and not put the girl into this whole mess on purpose. Or maybe she wanted to….? Anyways, I don’t think we’ll ever know the thought process of her friend, who was sitting next to her, by the way.

I would like to add some words about the parents of the teen driver. I understand their frustration and wanting the other family to pay for the full repair, but I do think they are forgetting that their own daughter also has some responsibility here and should face the consequences of her actions. If she was not aware of what her friend was doing in her car, she needs to see that she’s also part of the problem.

No matter the essence of the conflict and how they end up solving it, I hope this really doesn’t affect the relationship between the two girls. The issue now is with the parents, and I really expect them to solve the problem on their own and not drag their kids into a mess that now belongs to them.