What You Need To Know If Your Child Is Injured At School

August is National Back To School month and the beginning of the fall semester in Florida! This school year is going to look very different from last year, as the majority of students are projected to go back to in-person learning and masks are no longer required to be worn on public school property. Hopefully, this allows for more normalcy and peace of mind for parents, but also comes with risks, including your child being injured at school.

If you are a parent with a school-aged child, you trust that they will be safe when they return to school – you rightfully expect that school districts will provide a safe environment where your child can be educated. However, if your child is seriously injured due to the negligence of the school district or its employees, you have rights! Contacting an aggressive Florida personal injury attorney will give you the best chance at achieving justice and maximum financial compensation.

The Florida Law Group understands that there is nothing parents want more than to keep their children safe, and there is hardly anything else that can have a more devastating impact on them than their child being hurt because of the carelessness of a party they trusted. If your child was injured at school, call our law firm today to learn about your legal options!

Seeking a settlement for injuries children receive at school is different from other types of personal injury lawsuits. Here are a few important things you need to know if your child was injured at school!

The school has a responsibility to prevent foreseeable dangers.

Whether or not your child’s injury was “foreseeable” will have a major impact on the success of your case; if the school knew about a danger and failed to fix it, and that problem caused your child to be injured at school, then you are more likely to recover damages.

In public schools, school officials are legally required to maintain safe conditions. This is a type of “premises liability” – sanitary bathrooms, working playground equipment, dry floors, non-toxic paint, etc. are all things that must be provided. If these conditions are not maintained, the school is liable. Say that your child is injured by a broken swing on the playground, and the swing had been rusted for some time. The school may be responsible then, in that situation, for your child’s injuries, because that was a foreseeable danger they did not prevent.

The school has a responsibility to take reasonable steps to stop students harming each other.

The duty of care mandated by law includes school officials having enough staff to properly supervise students on the premises and doing everything in their power to prevent students from being harmed by each other. Some instances of bullying and aggression caused by other students are not preventable, but some are. For example, if another student in your child’s class picks up a book without warning and throws it at your child, causing an injury, that is likely not going to fall under the school’s liability unless the teacher was not present in the classroom at that time. However, if another child attacks yours in the cafeteria, and the staff does not attempt to help, they may be liable for injuries sustained by your child.

The school has a responsibility to take reasonable steps to stop teachers harming students.

Schools have to conduct adequate background checks when hiring teachers, coaches, and other staff who will interact with your child. In unfortunate and tragic cases of sexual abuse, if the school should have known that the employee had a prior history of inappropriate conduct, or did not properly supervise the interactions between students and employees, then they could be civilly liable for the abuse that occurred.

The school is usually not responsible for injuries incurred during organized sporting events.

Student athletes and their families assume the normal risks involved in sports, which means that injuries sustained while playing or practicing for school sports are probably exempt from liability unless the injury was caused due to unsafe physical conditions, like a slippery gym floor that should not have been slippery, or a hole in the soccer field that should have been filled in.

Public schools have sovereign immunity, which means that you will need an attorney to represent you, and a settlement may be more difficult to recover.

Most government agencies (including public schools) have immunity from lawsuits, also known as sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity means that they cannot be sued, although most agencies do make exceptions to this rule and allow themselves to be sued under specific conditions. These rules vary by state, and they are complicated, so it is extremely important to hire a Florida lawyer who understands sovereign immunity and who can fight for you to get the settlement you deserve.

Taking legal action is a time-sensitive matter, and if you miss the deadline, you will not be able to sue.

Sovereign immunity laws may require parents of injured schoolchildren to take extra steps and meet shorter deadlines if a public school is the defendant. You may be required to notify the school of the intention to sue before the case begins, and you may need to do so within six months of the accident. If you don’t take the necessary steps in time, you may lose your ability to sue entirely. That’s why it is so important to consult with an attorney immediately after your child sustains an injury at school!

The Florida Law Group has recovered over $1 billion dollars for injured accident victims, including children, and their families. We have over 100 years of legal experience on our team, and we are ranked in the top 1% of personal injury law firms nationwide by many prestigious legal organizations, including the National Trial Lawyers Top 100! Our lead attorney, Chris Limberopoulos, is a board certified civil trial specialist (an expert at personal injury law). We never charge our clients until we are able to recover damages on their behalf, so there is no harm in coming in for a no-cost consultation and learning more about what you could win in a settlement if your child was injured at school! Call today to schedule a free appointment and get started.