When Is a Daycare Negligent for a Child’s Injuries in Missouri?
Posted in Personal Injury on December 9, 2020
In Missouri, daycare centers have a responsibility to follow certain laws to ensure the safety of their children. However, not all daycare centers follow these rules, leading to severe injuries to those in their care. Children who suffer injuries as a result of a daycare’s negligence may be eligible to recover compensation for their damages. However, these accidents must meet certain requirements to qualify as negligence.
Common Causes of Daycare Accidents
Multiple factors can contribute to a child suffering harm at daycare. Unavoidable accidents, playground altercations, and rough play can contribute to injuries such as scrapes, bruises, broken bones, lacerations, and more. In some circumstances, however, negligence causes these accidents.
Negligence refers to an entity’s breach of its duty of care through an action or a failure to act to prevent foreseeable harm. In Missouri, a daycare center has the responsibility to ensure that its facility is safe, it has proper procedures in place to respond to all situations, and its staff have proper training and credentials.
Common types of daycare negligence include the following.
- Improperly trained or supervised employees
- Unsafe toys or playground equipment
- Abusive employees
- Unsafe classrooms or facilities
- Dangerous sleeping areas, including cribs and bedding
- Failure to appropriately develop and implement policies and procedures
Proving Daycare Negligence in Missouri
If your child suffered harm due to the negligence of a daycare center or one of its employees, you may be eligible for legal action against the entity. However, you will need to prove that the daycare provider is legally responsible for your child’s injuries and resulting damages. Simply put, you will need to gather enough evidence to establish the daycare’s negligence.
To prove negligence, you will need to prove that the following four facts are true.
- Duty of care: You will need to establish that the daycare owed your child a duty of care at the time of the accident. A Missouri daycare center has the legal responsibility to ensure that your child receives care and to prevent reasonably foreseeable injuries.
- Breach of duty: Next, you will need to prove that the daycare failed to meet this duty of care. This breach of duty could refer to inaction on behalf of the staff members, or that a staff member committed an act that rises to the level of negligence.
- Direct causation: After establishing the negligence, you will need to prove that the inaction or action directly caused your child’s injury. You will need to show that, had this negligence not occurred, your child would not have suffered harm.
- Damages: Finally, you will need to prove that your child suffered damages as a result of the accident that you can collect in your lawsuit. You can claim economic damages, such as medical expenses, as well as non-economic damages, or pain and suffering, in your lawsuit.
After a daycare accident, it can be difficult to recover from the harm that your child has suffered. However, you do have the right to bring a lawsuit against the daycare center on behalf of your child to ensure a full recovery. To protect your child’s future and his or her right to compensation, seek the help of a Missouri daycare injury lawyer as soon as possible.
Your lawyer can help you and your family gather evidence, contact expert witnesses, and build a compelling case in your child’s favor. These services allow you to focus on your child’s recovery, not legal paperwork or complex litigation processes. Once your child receives medical attention for his or her injuries, contact your Kansas City child injury lawyer to discuss your legal options.