When is a Daycare Liable for Injuries to a Child?

 Posted on February 10, 2020 in Personal Injury

Parents who drop their children off at daycare trust that the daycare staff will treat their child with the care and attention they need and deserve. Unfortunately, daycare accidents do happen, and children can be seriously injured as a result. Sometimes these injuries could have been prevented if daycare workers took the steps necessary to ensure the safety of the children in their care. If your child has suffered an injury while at a childcare facility, you may be wondering whether the facility or childcare staff are at fault for your child’s injury.

Determining Fault in a Childcare Injury Case

Tragically, sometimes an injury to a child is the result of abuse. If you have reason to believe that your child was harmed by the intentional actions of daycare staff, contact law enforcement right away. Next, contact an experienced injury attorney. It is possible that you may be able to file a civil claim in addition to any criminal charges brought against the daycare staff.

One of the most common ways that infants and children are seriously injured at daycare is through negligence. A childcare facility owner or staff member is considered negligent when the following elements are present:

A Duty of Care Existed: Childcare facility owners and staff have a duty to provide “reasonable” care. This is typically defined as the level of care that a reasonably sensible person of similar training would provide in similar circumstances.

Breach of Duty of Care: Daycare owners and workers can breach their duty of care in a variety of ways. Examples of breach of duty may include:

• A daycare owner or manager does not follow proper background check procedures when hiring staff and ends hiring a person previously convicted of child abuse
• A daycare owner fails to upgrade broken playground equipment even through the equipment is obviously unsafe
• Daycare staff are too busy talking on their cellphones when a child wanders out of the playroom and into a dangerous kitchen area

Cause in Fact: The child’s injury is the direct result of the daycare owner or staff member’s breach of duty. This means that the child would not have been injured if the breach of duty had not occurred.

Damages: The child, and subsequently the child’s parents, suffered actual damages because of the responsible party’s actions. Damages in a childcare injury case can include past and future medical bills incurred by the child’s injury, disfigurement or disability caused by the injury, the child’s pain and suffering, and more.

Contact a Winnebago County Childcare Injury Lawyer

If your child was seriously hurt while at a childcare facility, contact a seasoned Rockford personal injury attorney at Mannarino & Brasfield, A Division of Schwartz Injury Law. We will work with you to determine who the party responsible for your child’s injuries is and then aggressively pursue compensation on your behalf. Call us at 815-215-7561 today to schedule a free, confidential consultation. 

Source:

http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/circuitcourt/civiljuryinstructions/120.00.pdf