Larger Legal Settlements
Result in District Efforts to Limit Liability Risks
Many large injury settlements are preventable if administrators provide their staff with adequate playground supervision training. Are you adequately training your playground supervisors? I recently served as an expert witness in a case in a Los Angeles Court involving a elementary school student who sustained a serious injury, and what may be life long consequences, suffered at recess. The case settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. It was a case I worked on for 6 months. In legal training I received from California Teachers Association, we learned that typical legal and court costs can be more than $175,000 per case. However, when verdicts which include possible lifelong care are added to legal costs, the results can easily end up costing millions of dollars.
I had another case last year where a kindergarten child was playing at recess and kids were throwing sticks. A stick lodged in this child's eye and she ended up losing her eye. She will need a prosthetic eye fitted and changed at least three times while growing up. She lost the sight in her eye, and will need future medical treatment. As you can imagine, this case resulted in a large settlement.
Each of these injuries was preventable. I have worked as an expert for 16 years. Recently, I have been seeing larger and larger settlements and more serious injuries like the two described above. This trend is a great concern for schools, teachers, parents and students.
Assigning playground supervisors to recess duty is only 50% of the responsibility of supervision. If supervisors do not intervene in unsafe play and a child is injured it can be determined to be negligent supervision. Supervision and supervisors should be active. Neglecting or being distracted from this responsibility for even a few seconds can result in a serious injury.
COVID-19 Puts Schools at an Increased Risk
In addition to the usual supervision duties, schools are expected to keep children safe during the pandemic. You may be wondering "what is the criteria for 'safe'? To determine that answer, Courts will examine a construct called the "standard of care".
Although this is an unusual time --- typically in a situation like this, where there is little legal precedent for pandemics, the Courts would look to agencies like the CDC and/or the local Public Health Department's Advisories to Schools for COVID-19 to determine an appropriate "Standard of Care". To limit your school's potential liability, implementing the strategies in these advisories will become critical should a lawsuit be brought against your school or staff.
It should be noted, some States have enacted legislation protecting schools from liability during the pandemic.