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What Should I Do if My Child Was Injured at Daycare?
It is devastating for a parent or guardian to have to navigate a child’s daycare injury. When you choose a daycare for your child, you are entrusting his or her well-being to the staff. A daycare injury that results from negligence and causes harm to your child can feel impossible to face. But the daycare injury lawyers at Regan Zambri Long PLLC will be by your side every step of the way to hold the daycare center responsible and to help you claim the compensation you and your child deserve.
Your child is entitled to the same compensation as a victim of other personal injury claims. This includes physical pain, emotional suffering, medical bills, and rehabilitation or accommodation costs. As a parent or guardian, you are also eligible to claim compensation for court costs and the wages you have lost because of your child’s injury. Call us today for a free consultation.
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The skilled premises liability lawyers at Regan Zambri Long PLLC provide free, no-obligation legal review of your child’s daycare injury claim. If you would like us to assess your case, answer your questions, and discuss your legal options, contact us using our online form or call our office directly at (202) 960-4596 for a free consultation.
A personal injury case for a child will be quite similar to one for an adult. You as the parent or guardian will be responsible for looking out for your child’s best interests, so you will want to hire an experienced child injury attorney to help you pursue the compensation on behalf of your child.
It can be challenging to put a dollar value on the pain and suffering your child has endured or may still endure because of an accident or injury at daycare. Some factors, including the extent of injuries, frequency, and intensity of treatment, and disfigurement or impairment, are quickly recognized. Other factors, including anxiety, depression, embarrassment, sleep issues, or emotional disorders may take longer to manifest themselves. But these damages and injuries are still entitled to compensation. Your qualified daycare injury lawyer will work with you and your child’s doctor to determine the extent of all your child’s injuries and will help you calculate the costs.
Negligence standards vary depending on the age of the child, but when you have trusted a daycare facility and its employees to take care of your child, they should be held responsible for any failure to do so.
Any daycare center or child care facility is responsible for providing a safe environment for the children attending. This includes proper vetting of all employees, adequate staffing and training, safe equipment and environments, and following any other state requirements and regulations. These factors comprise the facility’s duty of care to the children and parents or guardians. Failure to uphold every aspect of the duty results in a breach of duty. Legally proving negligence requires establishing that a duty of care existed and was breached, directly causing an accident and resulting in injuries or damages.
In general, children are considered incapable of negligence, because being negligent implies that the person has an understanding of risk and carefulness. Any parent or guardian knows that children, especially young children, learn about risks and carefulness usually by experiencing the consequences of their actions. What this means for daycare injuries is that, even if your child engages in a behavior that an adult or older child recognizes as a bad idea—such as jumping from the top of a jungle gym—the daycare workers are still responsible for protecting your child from his or her lack of understanding. If a daycare tries to deny liability because your young child’s injury was a consequence of his or her own actions, you should immediately consult a daycare injury lawyer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that more than 7,000 children (0-19) died in 2019 from unintentional injuries such as car accidents, suffocation, drowning, poisoning, fires, and falls. Many of these accidents, if not all of them, were preventable. While car accidents were the leading cause of these deaths, many of the other causes are things that could easily happen while your child is at daycare.
National Capital Poison Center data shows that 886,342 children under the age of six were exposed to some kind of poison in 2020. Often these situations occur when a curious child finds cleaning solutions or other household chemicals and ingests them.
It is heartbreaking to know that many accidents and injuries are preventable. Parents and guardians know that young children seem especially injury-prone in the seconds or minutes when the parent has looked away, a parent may feel the weight of responsibility more than a daycare worker who allows him- or herself to be distracted and thereby unintentionally negligent.
Though many daycare injuries are truly unintentional, the terrible reality is that some daycare workers can and do intentionally inflict harm on the children in their care. For the sake of your child—and the sake of other children at the daycare facility in the present or the future—you should consult with a qualified child injury attorney as soon as you find out about your child’s daycare injury. You may be entitled to compensation to cover any medical costs and, if the injury was intentionally inflicted by another person, you may help protect other children from suffering the same tragedy.
Though awful to consider, the unfortunate reality is that some daycare center employees should not be around children. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse can happen at daycare facilities and those daycare facilities must be held accountable for the practices that allowed children to be harmed.
Vicarious liability may allow you to bring personal injury claims against both the individual who harmed your child and against the daycare center for failing to thoroughly vet an employee before hiring.
Navigating daycare abuse is a nightmare for parents and for children. The attorneys at Regan Zambri Long know that both you and your child will need compassion as much as compensation, and we are dedicated to claiming justice on your behalf while doing our best to protect you and your child from any further trauma and harm.
Many children suffer minor injuries in the course of simply being children—bumps, bruises, scrapes, and scratches. Other injuries are more severe and require medical attention. Daycare injuries can be a mix of minor and severe injuries. Some of the most common injuries include:
Kids can be surprisingly resilient when they slip or fall, but sometimes these accidents can result in serious injuries. Brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and broken bones are a few of the more serious injuries that can occur from slips and falls. If a child falls from a playground or jungle gym, even if the equipment itself is sound, the resulting injuries can be serious. If the equipment is faulty, you may have grounds for a product liability claim.
Serious injuries can happen if children are not supervised adequately. If a daycare center or its playground has access to a road, curious children could wander into the roadway and be injured or even killed by a vehicle.
Cleaning supplies can pose another serious threat to children. If chemicals or other solutions are not properly secured, a child might ingest or spill them on him- or herself, resulting in sickness, external reactions, or even death.
Injuries can happen anywhere, but some places see more accidents than others. Playgrounds see more accidents and injuries than other daycare areas, because of the rambunctious nature of children at play. Running, climbing, and jumping are common occurrences while playing outside, and young children especially are still learning coordination and limitations. Additionally, playground squabbles can result in injuries as children are learning how to deal with disagreements and not getting their way. If an employee fails to intervene in time to prevent an injury, you may be eligible for compensation.
It is common for daycare centers and child care facilities to have guardians sign liability waivers and releases before a child can attend. Before letting this paperwork deter you from seeking compensation you should consult with a daycare injury attorney.
An experienced daycare injury lawyer will take into account any paperwork you have signed and advise you on how to move forward claiming the compensation you and your child deserve.
Parents are very acquainted with the question of whether an injury needs a bandaid or a doctor. Determining whether a daycare injury warrants a legal claim or not can feel similar, leaving parents and guardians wondering, how severe should an accident be before seeking compensation?
You and your child are entitled to compensation for any preventable injury sustained at daycare. If you take your child to see a doctor, pediatrician, to urgent care, or to an emergency room, you should consult with a child injury lawyer. At the very least, the responsible daycare or child care center should compensate you for the medical expenses and any wages you lose in taking care of your child and the injury.
Serious injuries such as traumatic brain injuries, broken bones, poisonings, or significant burns definitely warrant a legal claim against the daycare. But even seemingly lesser injuries, including concussions, sprains, and even emotional injuries such as embarrassment or humiliation that prevent your child from thriving at daycare warrant holding the facility accountable. It is not always clear right away how severe an injury could be, so it is best to consider all your options early on. Consulting with an experienced daycare injury attorney will help you determine whether filing a claim is right for you.
Keep in mind that the statute of limitations varies depending on the jurisdiction. Washington, DC, and Maryland give you three years to file a personal injury claim while Virginia only gives two years to file.
Facing your child’s injury may be one of your worst nightmares come to life. If a daycare accident ended in a fatality, nothing can make that right for you and your family, but justice is possible.
The legal team at Regan Zambri Long has been compassionately pursuing justice for injured children for decades, and they are ready to bring that experience to bear on your case.
We know that as important as financial compensation is to ensure your child has the best recovery possible, accountability is an important part of the closure you will seek for your family and your child. We work hard to make sure that negligent parties are held responsible for their actions or in-actions so that the same negligence and accidents don’t happen over and over again.
At Regan Zambri Long we believe justice should be available to everyone, which is why we don’t charge any fees until we’ve won a recovery in your favor. When you seek to hold a negligent person responsible for his or her actions, you shouldn’t be held back by exorbitant attorney fees.
You can schedule a free consultation with an experienced daycare injury lawyer by calling 202-960-4596. Our locally and nationally recognized legal team will walk through your case with you, advise you of your child’s rights, and ultimately stand with you as you seek the compensation you and your child deserve.
