St. Louis Daycare Injury Lawyer

If you believe that you may qualify to file a lawsuit against daycare providers in St. Louis, Missouri, reach out to our law firm today to discuss your legal options. Daycare injuries can be extremely scary for parents. Our law firm offers a free consultation to all potential clients and will provide advice on legal questions surrounding daycare injuries. Contact us for more information. We’re here to make sure that negligent parties are held responsible, so that you can focus on the recovery of your child.

How an Injury Attorney Can Help

Before moving forward with a lawsuit, familiarize yourself with the steps in a civil lawsuit. From there, you and your children must complete a few important steps with the help and guidance of your attorney:

• Mitigate Injuries
• Gather Evidence
• Assess Damages

An accident attorney will also help to determine liability for your personal injury claim and explain to the courts how negligence of another party harmed your children.

Mitigate Injuries

With any case of negligent supervision, it’s important for affected children to seek medical care and attempt to best recuperate from any injury. If you loved one has suffered from an injury, seek medical treatment right away and follow the instructions of health care personnel. Failure to properly mitigate injuries, with medical issues left unchanged and able to worsen, can result in a dismissal of any legal action, barring certain circumstances.

Gathering Evidence

Gather evidence for your case including any names, photos, videos, and receipts. Personal injury cases are won and lost based solely on the evidence provided. Evidence in a lawsuit may include:

• Medical documents and emergency room records
• Photos or videos of injuries
• Photos or videos of abuse
• Photos or videos of the site of an accident
• Witness statements
• Statements from responding authorities if available

Your injury attorney will examine the facts and evidence to determine who is liable for injuries and damages.

Assessing Damages

Your attorney will begin assessing damages that you or your children incurred as a result of the alleged abuse. In many instances, individuals who have endured systematic abuse will choose to list both punitive damages and compensatory damages suffered from the incident. Typical damages in a lawsuit include:

• Medical bills
• Rehabilitative surgery
• Pain and suffering
• Emotional trauma

Your attorney will work to settle your lawsuit out of court or take it to a jury trial and win a verdict; in either case, the goal is to win compensation that covers the costs of damages.

What if I Signed a Daycare Liability Waiver?

An accident occurred at the daycare center and your child suffered an injury, but the next question in your mind is if the liability waiver you signed could prevent you and your family from receiving compensation for the accident. Daycare liability waivers almost never hold any weight in a St Louis daycare negligence lawsuit. Although many daycares require parents to sign liability waivers, they do not legally exonerate a daycare provider in the case of daycare accidents or injuries. There have been multiple cases of a judge ruling that a liability waiver should not exempt a daycare or its employees from being held responsible for the child's accident. In the eyes of the law, the daycare center or employee negligence caused the child to be injured or killed, and a piece of paper does not hold any weight in skirting that responsibility. Do not let a liability waiver prevent you from filing a lawsuit. If you have any questions, your daycare negligence attorney can help.  

Liability could be placed on a daycare employee failed to properly supervise your child. Liability could be determined if a property owner did not keep up their premises, even with the knowledge that it could be potentially dangerous, and a child is injured because of the condition of the site. There is not always a clear-cut answer to who, or what organization, will hold liability for child injuries, which is why it's important to discuss your case with a premises liability attorney sooner rather than later. A premises liability attorney will be able to help determine the at-fault party in a particular case. If an injury does occur and you are interested in pursuing a daycare injury lawsuit, there must be four things established before the fault can be proven.

1. Duty - The care provider failed to meet an understood obligation to your child.
2. Cause - Failure to meet this duty resulted in the injury.
3. Foreseeable - The incident could have been prevented in some way.
4. Proof - There is evidence to show that prove duty, cause, and foreseeable are linked.

Once those four factors have been proven, an attorney will help guide you in through the next steps.

Responsible Parties for Injury to a Child

Liable parties vary between cases, depending on how an incident occurred, where it occurred, who was involved, and more. Liable parties can include:

• Daycare centers, employees, and management
• Property owners
• Any other person responsible for the care of a child

Can a School be Held Liable for Child Injuries?

In Illinois, liability cannot typically be placed on a school for any personal injury occurred on their property. Public schools are generally immune to legal ramifications for any incident that injures a child on their property. We are often contacted about playground injuries. If your child's injury occurred on a playground, especially resulting from actions of other children, you likely cannot file a lawsuit. But, if your child's injury was due to dangerous conditions of playground equipment, you might be able to file. Dangerous or unkept playground equipment can cause serious injury. A public school cannot be held responsible for an injury unless “willful and wanton misconduct” is found to have occurred. Willful and wanton misconduct refers to “a course of action which shows an actual or deliberate intention to cause harm or which, if not intentional, shows an utter indifference to or conscious disregard for the safety of others or their property.” If an injury occurred at a school because of negligent supervision, willful and wanton acts, your child injury lawyer may have to file a notice of claim in order for the lawsuit to be legitimate. Legal action against a public school, school district, or school employees can be complicated. Contact an attorney if your kid was injured on school property.

According to the Center for American Progress, “almost one-quarter (23.4 percent) of children under the age of five are in some form of organized child care arrangement, which includes daycare centers, nurseries, and preschools.” With a large portion of the country’s children enrolled, daycare accidents are not uncommon. Before putting your children in the care of another, cross-reference the names of daycares you’re contemplating with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services database. It is also important to note that you should only place your children in a licensed and safe facility. The State of Illinois has strict requirements for licensing daycares and preschools. Licensed childcare facilities also do have a duty of care, or obligation, to prevent accidents from occurring and if they do happen, report those accidents immediately.

What are Common Daycare Injuries?

Child care facilities are responsible for children’s safety, trusted by parents to provide the utmost care. A child can easily be injured at a daycare facility because of employee negligence or failure to provide close supervision. A child could also be injured by dangerous property, such as defective playground equipment or unsafe premises left unchanged. There are a multitude of injuries that can occur at a daycare center:

• Cuts and bruises
• Broken bones
• Head injury, specifically from falling or falling objects
• Dental injury
• Unintentional poisoning
• Drowning
• Burns
• Choking or suffocating
• Abuse
• Food poisoning

If your child was injured while under the watch of a daycare employee or daycare provider, ensure 911 is called immediately and medical aid is provided.

Sexual Abuse at Daycare Facilities

Daycares are unfortunately places where sexual abuse can occur. The non-profit Darkness to Light published statistics on sexual abuse in daycares, finding that of daycare employees who were found to be exhibiting abusive or negligent conduct, 20% committed sexual abuse.

Daycare Injuries in St. Louis

In 2012, the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported in a four-year study of daycare facilities that 41 of 45 deaths in child care occurred in unlicensed homes and facilities. In March 2019, two St. Louis employees were charged with child abuse for incidents that were caught on tape. In one incident, one woman was recorded throwing a three-year-old across a room. In the other incident, another employee was charged with abuse after injuring a 4-year-old. Both incidents occurred at Brighter Daycare and Preschool.

Typically, a St. Louis daycare injury attorney will conduct a consultation with you to discuss the details of the incident. Things like the date of the incident, what occurred, video evidence, and medical treatment are all discussed in the initial call. Once a lawyer determines whether you have a case, discovery will begin: the in-depth investigative portion of the lawsuit. Evidence will be collected such as medical records, pictures and video, witness interviews, and all other details of the case. After discovery, all evidence will be presented to defendants. At this point, we hope to enter settlement negotiations. Most of the time, lawsuits settle prior to going to trial, but in some instances, an agreement cannot be reached and the case will proceed to trial. A judge or jury will then decide the outcome. While there are many more aspects involved in a personal injury claim, the above-mentioned steps are the most important and will give you an idea of the timeframe. But, keep in mind, each lawsuit is different and there is no specific timeframe.

For accident victims, navigating legal issues after a traumatic incident such as daycare abuse can be difficult. Choosing an experienced attorney to represent you, a family member, or a loved one can be an extra, unneeded stress.

Hiring an attorney is an important decision to make as a parent, so you should go into it fully informed. Making an informed decision on legal representation is paramount. When hiring an attorney, you should be able to focus on you and your loved one’s well-being and recovery from their injury, while lawyers work hard on your case and fight for your legal rights. An experienced attorney will be able to act on your behalf, doing the following:

• Files a legal claim
• Deliberates with any insurance company involved
• Assesses your medical expenses and damages
• Ensures that you receive compensation for any injury or damages from the negligent party.

Your daycare injury lawyer will fight for you and your rights. At TorHoerman Law, that is our primary objective – fighting for you. Contact us for a free case review and free consultation.  

We're not like other attorneys: TorHoerman Law has achieved more than $4 billion in verdicts and negotiated settlements in a variety of practice areas. Our past results afford us recognition as some of the best lawyers in Missouri and Illinois.

Our focus is based solely on providing competent services and formal legal advice, building an attorney client relationship, and achieving full financial recovery for your child's injuries. From the beginning, we’ve intended to form a strong attorney-client relationship: you will be kept in the loop on your personal injury case, privacy will be afforded for confidential or sensitive information, and we will use our knowledge of the law and work tirelessly to reach a settlement that will compensate for your child’s injury. TorHoerman Law operates on a contingency fee basis. With working on a contingency basis, our clients do not pay legal service fees until they have been fully compensated for their losses. If you do not receive a settlement, our firm will foot the bill for all legal costs. Consider contacting TorHoerman Law for a free case evaluation and free consultation in your search for a daycare lawyer in St. Louis City and St. Louis County, Missouri. THL: your daycare injury lawyers and Missouri law experts.