Injured on school property: Milwaukee personal injury lawyers Get compensation if your child was injured at school

As one of the top personal injury law firms in the country, Warshafsky Law has extensive experience in all types of personal injury lawsuits—including cases involving students injured on school property. If your child has been seriously injured while on school property or on a school-sponsored outing, we can help you recover the expenses you’ve incurred as a result of the injury.

Milwaukee personal injury attorneys and school injury lawsuits

When we send our children off to school, we do so with the understanding that the school has an obligation to provide for the safety and security of all their students. If a school fails to follow accepted standards for providing a safe environment and a student is injured, the school has been negligent in their duty and can be sued for the losses incurred by the student and his/her family.

What kinds of school injuries merit a lawsuit?

Parents often ask if they can sue if their child was seriously injured at school or on a school related outing, such as a field trip or athletic event at another school. In most cases, the answer is yes. However, the injury has to be serious enough to warrant a lawsuit.

The bumps and bruises that accompany athletic events, and even those from roughhousing on the playground, are not the type of injuries that merit a personal injury lawsuit. A bus accident that leaves a child paralyzed, or a fractured skull caused by a bully beating up another child—these are the types of school injuries that merit lawsuits.

Multiple parties may be held liable for your child’s injury

With injuries that occur on school property, the school itself is rarely the only party named in a lawsuit. Consider, for instance, playground injuries. A lawsuit could fault the teacher on duty for inadequate supervision, the school for not properly maintaining playground equipment and the manufacturer of the equipment for an inherently dangerous design or poor construction. If another child’s playground bullying caused the injury, the parents of that child may be held accountable. A daycare negligence lawyer may also recoup damages if your child was injured while in the care of others.

Our personal injury attorneys always look to identify all liable parties, particularly those with the deepest pockets. Compensatory awards for any medical expenses you’ve incurred and lost time from work as you’ve dealt with your child’s injury are one thing, but punitive awards are another matter entirely—and no one builds stronger cases and secures bigger judgments and settlements than Warshafsky Law.

Can you sue if you signed a school liability waiver?

Every school in the country now requires parents to sign a waiver of liability in order for their children to participate in any athletic activity or field trip. There are even liability waivers for chess club and ping pong. If you don’t sign, your child can’t participate. So, like most parents, you sign them.

These waiver of liability forms essentially coerce you into agreeing that you will not hold your child’s school responsible for any injury your child might sustain. Most parents just assume if their child IS injured, there won’t be anything they can do about it, at least from a legal perspective. But this isn’t necessarily so.

Why a signed liability waiver may not preclude you from filing suit

If you signed a liability waiver and your child was seriously injured on school property, you may still be able to file a personal injury claim. It’s not at all uncommon for state courts to not uphold a signed waiver of liability. This is because schools and school staff have a legal responsibility to keep students in their charge from harm, and requiring a parent to sign a waiver does not get them off the hook. The one exception to this is with activities deemed “inherently dangerous,” such as contact sports. More on this in moment.

In order to sue a school for negligence, you need to show the following:

• It was the duty of school personnel to adequately provide for the safety of your child
• The school failed in their duty of care
• As a result of the school failing to provide for the safety of your child, your child was injured
• Your child and you suffered actual damages as a result of the school’s breach of duty