When parents send their children off to school, they generally expect them to arrive home safely at the end of the day. However, during the hours at school, children are exposed to a number of physical activities and they can occasionally injure themselves. This can happen doing something simple like running in gym class or playing at recess. Most of the time, these injuries are minor inconveniences from which your child will heal quickly. However, when they are more serious, is the school district liable?
The first step to answering this question is examining the nature of the incident that led to the injury. If an employee of the school was negligent in caring for your child, the school district may be responsible. For instance, if a football coach failed to properly teach his young charges how to properly tackle or a baseball coach didn’t show his kids how to slide into base and one was injured, the school may be liable. However, even if the child was injured roughhousing on the playground, if the monitoring teacher was not paying proper attention to the kids, a plaintiff could still argue that the district was negligent in failing to provide proper supervision.
However, even if you believe that a school district was negligent, it is not as simple as just filing a lawsuit. Public school districts, like government agencies, are entities that enjoy sovereign immunity. What this means is that the agency is immune from lawsuits except under a few circumstances. Fortunately, an injured student is one of those circumstances. That said, plaintiffs must follow specific procedures to file a lawsuit. This begins first with filing a claim with the district. Then you must wait for the district to reply before you can proceed to state court.
If your child has been injured at school due to a staff member’s negligence, speak with a dedicated North Carolina personal injury attorney at Lanier Law Group, P.A.