On laptops and babies

Please answer the poll on the right. The question (for posterity) is:

If a laptop is thrown out of the window, and before it reaches the ground, I smash it with a baseball bat, I am not liable for it, since I “broke an already broken thing”. What if I catch the laptop? Do I get to keep it, or can I return it?

 I don’t know the answer, but one possible reason why I would have to return it is that by catching it, I have retroactively shown that its status was not “broken”. (But didn’t the person do yeush by throwing it out of the window?)

This is similar to the case of “proving” that a kohen is not a kohen (e.g., when two people are engaged, then they realize that the guy is a kohen and that the girl is forbidden to him — the rabbis will sometimes use loopholes to look for “evidence” that the guy is not a kohen). Alternatively, it may be similar to the situation with a get, where the latter goes back in time and makes it as if the marriage has never happened. Or with teshuva that likewise goes back in time and erases a sin (or transforms it into a mitzva).

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What does this have to do with babies? Rava, I think, rules that if the same scenario happens with a baby, chv"sh, the person with the bat is still a murderer. Because as long as the baby is still alive, even while it’s flying to its imminent death, one cannot say that its life is so worthless as to make it dead.

Which is a moshol given to the idea that we cannot say that the life of someone who is in coma is worthless, as long as he is alive halachically. Just being alive and lying there, the person already does something good. How? A soul of a person is compared to a candle. Just being in this world, it already introduces light into it, even if only on a spiritual level.

Which is why (besides other reasons) it’s good to have babies.

(Since some people have a problem with the concept of a metaphor, an allegory, an example, an imagined scenario, etc., let me state emphatically that I hope the said scenario never happened and never will, iy"H.)

Update: I just spoke to my rabbi, who told me that almost everything I wrote here is false. I shall investigate further and get back to you.