Pennsylvania School Injury Lawyers
Sending your child off to school or camp can be both exciting and scary for any parent. It is exciting to see your child growing up, becoming his own person, and gaining confidence and independence. It can also be extremely nerve-wracking to hand over the care of your child to someone else. Will teachers or camp counselors watch over my child carefully? Will they take as good care of him as I do? Placing the livelihood of your child in someone else’s hands is not an easy task. Despite harboring some slight worries, you send your child to school or camp, and believe he will be safe and return home unharmed. Unfortunately, horrifying and tragic accidents can happen while your child is at school or camp, and you are left to pick up the pieces.
Schools and camps have a duty to keep your child reasonably safe, and accidents and injuries usually occur due to improper supervision, negligent supervision, and failure to perform background checks and fully investigate teachers and counselors. Serious injuries like broken bones, spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, and death may occur in the school, on field trips, or on playgrounds if teachers and supervisors do not monitor children closely. School science labs and wood shops can be particularly hazardous to students who are not supervised properly, or if the school has failed to provide proper safety equipment like safety goggles, eye washes, and burn blankets. Preschool age children are at a risk of choking and suffocation if they are not supervised or if classroom games and toys have small parts and pieces.
Another cause of school and camp injuries is defective or poorly designed playground equipment, like jungle gyms lacking guardrails, loose or broken parts, improperly secured equipment, rusted parts, sharp edges, or improper protective surfaces under equipment in case of a fall. When children attend camps they may participate in potentially hazardous activities like horseback riding, canoeing, boating, hiking, tubing, rafting, and archery. A lack of supervision, improper training, and misuse or lack of safety equipment like helmets and life jackets could end with catastrophic injuries and death.
Other common causes of injuries at camps and schools include:
- Trips, slips, and falls from improperly maintained premises
- Improper or failure to train staff
- Failure to provide supervision or lifeguards
- Swimming pool accidents & drowning
- Improper hiring
- Failure to perform background checks
- Sexual assault & molestation
- Violation of federal and state regulations
- Inadequate or negligent security
- Food poisoning
- Lack of safety equipment
- Unlicensed or improperly trained drivers
- Failure to inspect and control weapons or sharp objects
If your child has been catastrophically injured or wrongfully killed while attending school or camp, the experienced Philadelphia catastrophic injury lawyers of Reiff & Bily may be able to help you. We will fully investigate your claim and fight to get you the compensation you deserve. As parents and trial lawyers with experience dealing with the unimaginable tragedies involving children and teenagers, we understand the devastation, pain, and mental anguish an injury to your child may bring to your whole family. We believe school and camp operators should take every possible precaution to ensure the safety and well-being of students. For over thirty years, our aggressive catastrophic injury lawyers have advocated for child safety and have won hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of catastrophically injured or wrongfully killed victims and their families. We will fight for you and make sure that negligent schools and camps are held responsible for their irresponsibility, and to make sure innocent children are not injured or wrongfully killed at their hands again.
