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In addition to the school district providing transportation, it must keep the campus a safe environment for children.
That duty remains in effect when it comes to sports events and rallies anywhere bleachers are used to sit down. What happens with the school fails to keep the location safe for a child or other person?
Bleachers are schools’ most convenient and cost-effective seating arrangement catering to parents and students during a sports event. We already know that spectators climb these bleachers and sit on the hard seats to enjoy a game or school activity. However, when school bleachers are poorly designed or not maintained properly, they can become a serious hazard to both adults and children, leading to accidents and causing severe injuries to students and parents.
As with all maintenance, an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. Ehline Law firm and our personal injury attorneys have successfully handled over 3,000 personal injury cases and obtained more than $150 million in compensation recovery for the injured victims.
If you are a plaintiff who suffered injuries in a school bleacher accident, contact our falling from a school bleacher accident attorneys in Los Angeles to learn more about your rights. After you consult with us, you will know whether it’s in your best interest to file a claim or not. If you decide to call us, our number is (213) 596-9642, and we can take calls 24/7.
School Districts in Los Angeles
There are more than 75 school districts in Los Angeles County. According to the California Department of Education, between 2019 and 2020, were 1,416,522 students enrolled in school districts across Los Angeles County.
Thousands of kids attend campus events where bleachers are in extensive use. A school’s duty of care extends past the doors of a school bus. This sacred duty remains in place until the student is safe from physical harm. School sports, in particular, see a lot of kids traveling to and from LAUSD and even UC System sports stadiums. Caretakers must ensure the sidewalks, common areas, and even the bleachers in the gym can handle the traffic and abuse common with young individuals and school sports and rallies, etc.
A school district in Los Angeles is responsible for its students and must ensure reasonable care to avoid any school accidents from occurring to a child. However, anything can go wrong at a school. Firearm and gun offenses, sexual assault, cafeteria food poisoning, and many other accidents can lead to severe injuries.
Accidents can put a child’s safety at risk from defective and unmaintained desks to lack of security protocol, negligent school administration, poor maintenance, and much more. Teachers, students, and families of wounded children can contact us 24/7 to discuss this or other problems at schools in Los Angeles, California, by dialing (213) 596-9642.
How Can School Bleacher Accidents Occur?
There are many causes of school bleacher accidents and falls. Some of them include the following:
Slippery Surfaces
If the school maintenance staff wants to clean bleachers before a sporting event, they must allocate enough time to ensure they are dry before the students arrive to sit on them.
However, a lack of coordination between the school management and the cleaning staff can lead to a partially dry or wet school bleacher that can cause slip-and-fall accidents. We help our clients receive compensation for the not-so-common and the common causes of teacher-student school bleacher accident injuries.
Pushing Weight Restrictions
Bleachers are commonly available in 5-row or 10-row seating arrangements that accommodate 42 to 144 spectators and can hold even more smaller kids. School management and other campus employees must ensure that they follow the load restrictions of a school bleacher to avoid accidents. That’s their business.
However, in large sports events, where the management fails to make necessary arrangements, they try to accommodate all the students and parents onto one bleacher, crossing the weight limit and resulting in a bleacher collapse that can cause severe injuries to multiple people.
These hurt people are often treated shabbily and have a hard time getting justice due to the hesitance of their family to sue a school teacher or other negligent public servant. If you don’t fight the faculty with a lawyer, they may assume it’s ok to maintain unsafe premises, campus, or another university.
Lack of Maintenance
Public schools often have budget issues, leading to management cutting corners to save on costs—one place where they cut corners is maintaining the school equipment, especially the bleachers. (Ex: A school bus needs more priority than a broken or loose bleacher planking.
To avoid incidents, the maintenance crew must check for loose bolts, flooring, rusted supports, and other issues that may happen with a bleacher. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, and these can cause severe accidents at events when bleachers are used.
Poorly Designed Guardrails
Guardrails act as safety measures for students and parents climbing up a bleacher. Poorly designed guard rails or loose and flimsy guard rails are a serious risk to anyone climbing the bleacher.
Since bleachers are not used as often as other school equipment and machinery, no one notices issues with the guardrails unless it’s too late. Slipping due to a loose guard rail can lead to severe injuries that the school could’ve easily prevented with routine maintenance.
Gaps in Footboard Areas
Some bleachers have gaps in footboard areas as a design element. However, poorly designed bleachers can have more significant gaps making it easier for students to slip through and injure themselves.
Unbolted Bleachers
In 1978, the bleacher at Woodlands High School of Greenburgh, where the visiting high school football team was sitting, collapsed due to unbolted bleachers injuring 27 people.
Greenburgh Police Department suspected the home team players to have caused such an incident as 95% of bolts were missing. Whether it was the high school players who removed the bolts or a new bleacher that the school did not install correctly, it is the responsibility of the school management to supervise students and ensure proper checks before a game or an event to avoid any accidents from occurring.
There Is No Tally of Bleacher School Accidents!
Although school bleacher accidents are not one of the many things on people’s minds, they’re more common than you think. However, there is no actual tally of how many accidents occur in the United States each year, as no federal agency monitors school bleacher safety.
According to EdWeek, from 1982 to 1989, multiple bleachers sold by Interkal Inc. of Kalamazoo collapsed, causing more than 300 student injuries. On April 15, 1989, a bleacher at the East Burke High School collapsed with the weight of 15 students, sending 8 to the hospital for medical treatment.
On September 9, 1989, a section of the bleachers at Charles County’s McDonough High School collapsed, sending 83 students to a local hospital due to the injuries sustained.
The manufacturers and the schools blame each other for their negligence, neither side accepting fault, but in the end, the injured students, players, or parents suffer due to the accident.
Common Bleacher School Accident Injuries
Depending on the accident and how you fall, here are some of the common types of school bleacher accident injuries that can occur:
- Traumatic brain injury
- Spinal cord injuries
- Crush injuries
- Fractures and broken bones
- Head and neck injuries
- Broken nose.
Who Is Responsible for the School District Bleacher?
Here are a few parties that could be responsible for your school accident, whether it is a bleacher slip and fall accident or a bleacher collapse accident.
- School district liability: School districts and school officials are responsible for protecting their students from harm that can occur at the school. When a student suffers injuries because the school district failed to take reasonable care in maintaining the school bleacher, injured students can hold them responsible for their injuries.
- Bleacher manufacturer liability: Besides school districts and their responsibility to ensure adequate care, manufacturers also have a responsibility to ensure they are selling safe bleachers. If the manufacturer cuts corners in safety checks and sells unsafe school bleachers to school districts, injured victims can hold them responsible for their accidents.
- Third-party maintenance company liability: A school district may be outsourcing its school maintenance to third-party companies, and these companies are responsible for ensuring routine maintenance to avoid accidents. If the bleacher accident occurred because of a lack of proper maintenance, the injured victims might hold the company responsible for their injuries.
If a slip and fall accident or any other accident on a school bleacher occurs, certain factors determine the liability of a school district, and these include:
- Whether the incident occurred during school hours or school activities
- Whether the incident happened due to the school’s negligence or an international act
- Whether the child’s injuries occurred on the school’s ground
- Whether the activity was a mandatory or a voluntary school-arranged activity.
How Can a Los Angeles School Accident Attorney Help with Your School Accident Case?
Under personal injury law, injured victims can recover compensation for their medical bills and other losses. However, one of the challenges in school accident cases is determining the responsible party. An experienced Los Angeles lawyer can help determine the cause of the accident and the responsible party to pursue a school accident lawsuit.
A skilled personal injury attorney from a reputable law firm can investigate the incident and gather evidence to strengthen your school district accident case. An attorney can speak to witnesses, bring in medical experts to assess injuries and calculate damages from your school accident. Thousands of past clients have trusted us, and you can, too, in just a few easy steps.
Calculating damages is one of the challenging parts of a school district accident. It is simple to calculate economic damages since they have a dollar value, but non-economic damages, such as emotional trauma from physical harm, pain and suffering, and others, do not have a dollar value. If the school district breached its duty to keep you or your children safe, they might not have total immunity in court.
Filing a school accident lawsuit alone can lead to lower recoveries. But having an experienced attorney can help assess the value of compensatory damages and maximize the amount you may recover for the negligent actions of allegedly immune employees who think they are protected against injured school bleacher occupants.
Another aspect of a school district accident case is handling any third-party insurance company. Insurers are not looking out for your best interest; going against one can severely disadvantage you. A school district accident attorney knows how to deal with the insurance company and will handle the entire claims process on your behalf. We can even help with sexual assault in a school bleacher and other common injuries sustained by falling children and teachers at a public school.
Statute of Limitations Problems
Filing a lawsuit is one thing, but following the legal process and ensuring everything is within the timeframe allowed by the statute of limitations is equally important. Some lawyers with less experience may think they have two years to sue in a school bleacher case. And that may be true for the nongovernment entity defendants.
We can help you pierce the shield of qualified and sovereign immunity and get the claim filed within the six-month statute of limitations for government-related claims. If you miss important deadlines and court dates or do not follow the legal process correctly, you risk losing the right to recover compensation. Our Southern California lawyers have a legal duty to follow the rules, and our duty of care extends until the case is over.
An attorney knows the legal process and the deadlines to ensure your injury case goes forward correctly. Let us help protect your legal right and make sure the at-fault parties are held accountable for resulting injuries caused by a dangerous condition of public property.
Schedule a Free Consultation with a Los Angeles School Bleacher Accident Lawyer
Did someone suffer fatal or even nonfatal injuries requiring hospitalization in Long Beach, Simi Valley, Santa Monica, or some other school district? Do you want to ensure the responsible parties are liable to pay you or a loved one maximum compensation under CA law? School accidents can be devastating, leading to severe injuries and, in some cases, death or permanent disabilities. Whether you suffered a slip and fall accident or playground injuries due to a school bleacher, you need an experienced personal injury attorney from our California law firm to protect your legal rights.
If you suffered injuries in a slip-and-fall accident due to loose guard rails at a public school and want to pursue a slip-and-fall lawsuit, we can help. Maybe you suffered injuries from any other type of school bleacher accident; contact us at (833) LETS-SUE for a free consultation on your California accident case. Get the legal help you deserve for your claim today and schedule a confidential meeting with a talented injury lawyer to review the details.
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