A 15-year-old was working out with his football team at Arabia Mountain High School. It was March and the boy was running inside the weight room when he ran into something. A broken electrical outlet was jutting out of a nearby wall and the 15-year-old had been caught on it. The piece of metal cut a 6-inch-long gash into the boy’s leg, and the injury has forced this athlete undergo a long and expensive recovery. Now, his school is refusing to accept any responsibility for the incident, but this boy’s mother won’t go down without a fight.
Should a Georgia School Be Held Responsible for a Sports Injury?
The boy’s mother says that the wound was so bad that she, her son, and a nurse all yelled when they unbandaged it for the first time. After the incident, the boy spent three days in the hospital and was confined to a wheelchair during part of his recovery. The total bill for his medical treatment came out to $56,000, and his mother feels that the school should be responsible for that bill.
A week after the incident that hurt her son, the 15-year-old’s mother returned to the scene. She found that the only repairs made to the broken outlet were a few strips of duct tape. The woman was furious. She claims that the broken outlet posed a threat to the students at Arabia Mountain High School, and that it should have been repaired immediately. However, the school seemed to be dragging its feet.
The woman requested that the school pay her son’s medical bills, but school officials declined to pay. So the family asked the school to take responsibility for what happened one more time. When the district refused for the second time, this tenacious mother filed a lawsuit. She feels that she was given no other choice.
The boy has now recovered and has even returned to playing football, but this lawsuit still looms over the DeKalb County school. Do you think the district should pay for this child’s injury? Is there a reason the electrical outlet wasn’t immediately repaired? Would that reason excuse the school from liability? Tell us what you think. Head to Facebook and Twitter and voice your opinion. Don’t forget to keep following our blog for even more info about your rights and premises liability.
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