Personal Injury Lawyer

After the coming of the new year, winter break has passed and school is well back in session. While parents will once again have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that their child is being securely watched over somewhere else, one also needs to think about the fact that a school isn’t entirely and not 100% replete with safety. If a school has 500 students, that’s 500 possibilities for things to go wrong. Just as adults can create hazardous conditions at a sports stadium, children can do just the same at a school.

Still, as a personal injury lawyer can explain, under personal injury law, schools and their staff are tasked with owing a duty of care to the students they teach. This involves making the property in which they teach free of hazards, while keeping the students from hating each other. In order to maintain this standard, school administrations are also charged with making sure that schools are adequately staffed with faculty that can oversee and ensure that no harm comes to the students. Below are the scenarios in which schools can be sued under personal injury law if your child gets injured on school grounds.

Injured by staff: Quite possibly the worst of the scenarios given that no parent wants to hear that the teacher that is supposed to be teaching and protecting their child is in fact harming them. After the event of an injury from a teacher, investigators would look at the teacher’s history and if they find that the staff member has a history that the school’s admins were aware of, then both the teach and the schools admins would be held liable for hiring someone who has been a well known threat to students.

Injured on property: If someone slips on the bathroom floor and gets injured like someone could in a gas station or grocery store then the same rules would apply for an injury on school grounds. If staff who are charged with cleaning or otherwise removing hazards from the property notice the hazard, but don’t remove the hazard within a reasonable amount of time then the school is at fault for the accident.

Injured by other students: This is the murkiest of the three, while schools are very much expected to take steps to diffuse and end altercations between students. If the altercation happens in such a manner that staff are unaware or can’t foresee the event happening then your gripe is less so with the school as it will be the parents of the child themselves.

Thanks to Brandy Austin Law for their expertise on personal injury liability in public schools.