What is Negligent Supervision?
Your Child Was Injured Due to Someone Else’s Negligence. Now What?
Unlike adults, children cannot differentiate items or activities that are safe and those that can injure them. As such, they need constant supervision from adults around them to ensure that they are safe from any harm.
Since children spend most of their time in daycares or schools rather than home, adults on school grounds and daycares are responsible for their safety. Adults typically include the administrative staff like the principal, teachers, and other staff such as janitors. When a child gets hurt, they’ll be held responsible.
Additionally, a parent can sue the school for the negligence of the child by hiring a child injury lawyer in Los Angeles. A lawyer for child accident injuries in Los Angeles ensures that the injured child and the parent receive compensation in terms of the medical bills they incur as a result of the injury.
Similarly, injury can happen at the workplace, and the employer will be held accountable for the injury. The elderly also need adequate supervision because they usually have little capacity to care for themselves fully. When the elderly or employees are injured, they can seek the services of a personal injury lawyer in Los Angeles that can help them get compensation.
What is Negligent Supervision?
Simply put, negligence supervision is leaving a child, an elderly, disabled, or employee unsupervised, resulting in injury. The lack of proper supervision can result in different forms of injury, whether physical or emotional, that can lead to a lawsuit of negligent supervision.
Negligence supervision of the parties mentioned can occur under different circumstances and environments.
Children.
Children are a danger to themselves and other children around them when they lack adequate supervision. However, not all children need the same level of supervision.
Two situations can make parents hire a Los Angeles child injury lawsuit attorney when their child is injured:
- Inadequate care of the child by his or her caregiver that results in the injury of the child.
- Lack of caregiver intervention when one child harms another intentionally.
These two circumstances can make a parent sue whoever was responsible for the child’s care. Anyone caring for the child can be held accountable in the event of injury. People such as grandparents, nannies, babysitters, family members or relatives, and leaders of the church can also face a lawsuit of negligent supervision. However, since children spend most of their time in school, teachers and other school staff are at a higher risk of child injury liability in LA.
The level of supervision a child requires mainly depends on the age of the child. For example, a preschooler is more likely to injure himself or herself when using a scissor than a middle-schooler. Other than age, more circumstances determine the level of supervision children should receive from the adults present around them. These include:
- The environment of the child.
An environment such as a bedroom or classroom is closed, and therefore, allows easier supervision of the child. However, when the child is outside playing in the park, a higher level of supervision is required. This is because the child can get injured through a fall, an object, or by another child. - The type of activity of the child.
An activity with low risk of injury such as playing a game on the phone does not require a high level of supervision compared to an activity like an arts and crafts lesson involving the use of a pair of scissors. - The level of experience of the child.
Older children aged 9 to 12 are more likely to have more experience in the things they do compared to children in preschool. A pair of scissors is safer in the hands of a middle schooler than those of a preschooler. Therefore, the younger ones need more supervision due to inexperience.
The elderly and disabled.
Inadequate supervision of the elderly usually occurs to older adults living in nursing homes under the care of the staff in the facility. Like school staff, the staff in nursing home facilities are also at high risk of this form of a lawsuit. The lawsuit may arise when the caregiver fails to supervise the elderly or give them enough attention leading to an injury. Injury of the elderly can be due to a fall, getting lost due to memory loss, poor hygiene that leads to bed sores or infections.
In contrast to the elderly, negligence supervision of people with a disability can occur in any setting. The particular disability of the person will determine the type of negligence. Inadequate supervision of the disabled usually results in the same injuries as those of the elderly because the two categories of people need the same level of supervision.
Employees.
Negligence supervision at the workplace occurs when there is misbehavior or harmful conduct at the workplace while the manager or boss is in charge of supervision. Injury of the employee at the workplace can be in the form of bullying, sexual harassment, poor standards of safety, and the failure of the employer to address ongoing corruption or fraud.
Requirements for a Negligent Supervision Lawsuit.
When filing the lawsuit, the accuser needs to prove that the defendant is responsible for the injury of the child, elderly, or employee. To prove this, the accuser must show that the defendant was responsible for the care of the victim when the injury happened. By default, parties like babysitters and teachers are accountable due to their roles.
After proving that the defendant was responsible for the victim’s care, the accuser needs to show that the defendant failed to give the victim the needed level of supervision. Then, the accuser should show how the lack of adequate supervision caused the injury. If the accuser has trouble doing this, he or she may seek the help of a Los Angeles children injury attorney to gather all the evidence necessary for the case.
Where to Find a Personal Injury Attorney
Parents whose children have been injured while under the supervision of someone else can easily find a Los Angeles child attorney by making a simple “child injury lawyer near me” on their phone. The search can result in thousands of child injury attorneys.
However, not all options in the results of the child injury lawyer near me search will be valid. Thus, the parent needs to check for the validity of the lawyer through reviews made by previous clients.
The best way to find a reliable personal injury attorney for children in Los Angeles is through a friend or family member that has previously used the lawyer. This guarantees that the lawyer is not a con artist and also enables you to trust his or her skills in handling the case.