Author: Nadia Ferguson
Did you know that when your child sustains a personal injury while at school, they could be entitled to a personal injury claim? Whilst your child is attending school, the school has a legal duty to ensure their safety and security. This duty includes but is not limited to, ensuring that the child can attend school in a safe environment, to ensure that the child’s dignity is respected and that they are protected from maltreatment, abuse and degradation. In instances where your child has suffered an injury while at school, it is important to understand what you, as a parent, can do.
What to keep in mind when instituting a claim:
The first thing to keep in mind is that the school must have a legal duty to ensure the safety of your child. For example: let us say that the children were playing on school grounds while on break, and one child injures another while playing rough. The school had a duty to keep proper supervision to prevent any such injuries.
Secondly, your child had to suffer an injury that caused them damage. For example: should the child in the above scenario have a mere bruise that completely fades in a day or two, they most likely do not have a viable claim.
When you start with this type of claim, it is against the school as well as the relevant Education Department, as they are the entity liable for such claims.
It is important to keep in mind that your claim against the school and the Education Department need not only arise from an incident where a learner injured another learner but also from instances where learners are injured by teachers at the school or where equipment is not maintained sufficiently and causes injury to a child.
If your child has been injured in an incident at school which changed the course of his or her life, feel free to contact Simpsons Attorneys today.
