Talk with our experienced Roswell daycare injury lawyers today at (800) 863-5312
About 27% of infants and toddlers go to daycare for their primary care arrangement. Those parents who drop their children off each morning expect the childcare service to keep children away from harm. Unfortunately, daycares sometimes fail to do so. When that happens, our Roswell daycare injury lawyers are here for parents whose children have been hurt in daycare.
If a daycare or employee of a daycare negligently harmed your child, a Roswell attorney might be able to help you seek compensation for your child’s injury. Call (800) 863-5312 to receive a free consultation with a Zinda Law Group attorney. We are ready to hear your story and help you decide your next steps.
John (Jack) Zinda
Founder / CEO
Over 100 years of combined experience representing injured victims across the country.
Available 24 / 7|Free ConsultationHow a Roswell personal injury lawyer can help
When you consult with a lawyer for the first time, you will likely want to know if you have a claim. A Roswell personal injury lawyer can help you figure out if your case could be successful in the legal process. If the attorney advises you to file your claim, he or she can help you in the following ways:
Neil Solomon
Partner
Real results matter. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
Available 24 / 7|Free ConsultationA Roswell Personal Injury Lawyer Can File Your Claim
When filing your claim, you might have to choose between suing the daycare company, an employee of the company, or both. Your lawyer might advise you to sue the company because it has insurance to pay for such incidents. A lawyer may also advise you to sue the employee because he or she disregarded the daycare’s safety procedures.
You must also choose the causes of action to include in your claim. Daycare injury cases often involve negligence, but other causes of action might also be appropriate. Your lawyer can help you determine which causes of action to list in your claim.. The lawyer can also make sure all the procedural elements are correct, such as the jurisdiction and the format of your claim.
Even if you have gotten all those elements correct, you must also file within the correct timeline to meet New Mexico’s statute of limitations. For personal injury cases, New Mexico’s statute of limitations allows three years after the day of the accident to file your claim. For personal injury cases involving minors, New Mexico allows claims to be brought within one year of the child’s eighteenth birthday.
Jason Aldridge
Attorney
Standing by 24 hours a day, 7 days a week ready to answer in your time of need.
Available 24 / 7|Free ConsultationA Roswell Attorney Can Perform Discovery
During discovery, lawyers dig deeper into what happened on the day of the incident. They investigate who was at fault for the accident and exchange the information with the other parties involved in the case. The investigation often involves interviews with witnesses and an examination of the daycare’s safety protocol. Lawyers might find expert witnesses to attest to the standard of care that daycares must use to prevent foreseeable harm to children.
Cole Gumm
Attorney
We are here to ensure you won’t have to face this difficult time alone.
Available 24 / 7|Free ConsultationA Lawyer Can Negotiate a Settlement
Once the parties have received enough information about the accident, they begin attempting to reach a settlement. Both parties usually prefer negotiating a settlement rather than going to trial. At trial, a jury decides who wins the case and how much compensation the prevailing party receives. Talk with your lawyer about your odds of success at trial before turning down settlement offers.
The negotiation itself could be highly contentious, since the daycare’s lawyers and insurance company will attempt to lower the settlement amount by raising defenses. They might state that the waiver you signed when you first contracted with the daycare precludes you from recovery. Or they might argue that you are proposing the wrong duty of care from daycare centers toward children. A Roswell daycare injury attorney will prepare for those arguments and can present the appropriate evidence to counter the defendant.
Read More: Roswell Personal Injury Lawyers
What should you do after a Roswell daycare accident?
After your child has been injured by a negligent daycare, you can be your child’s representative to sue for his or her injuries. You might be shocked that a daycare could be so careless with your child and immediately want to sue the company for its negligence. There are a few steps you should take before you file your claim in order to ensure that you can seek maximum compensation.
Document the Injury
First, document the injury as soon as you learn about it so that you have the strongest evidence possible. Waiting to gather this evidence could cause suspicion about the injury. Listen to your child when he or she tries to tell you about or show you the injury. Further, take notes about your child’s injury and take pictures of the injury if it is visible.
You might also file a police report for the injury. This provides an objective account of the accident since it comes from the police rather than the parent of the child or the owner or employee of the daycare. Include a copy of the police report for your personal record of the accident.
Take Your Child to the Doctor if Injured
Second, make an appointment for your child to go to the doctor as soon as you know he or she has suffered an injury. A doctor can diagnose your child’s injury and provide treatment to help him or her recover as quickly as possible. Doctor visits can also provide essential evidence for your claim.
Track your child’s appointments and keep a detailed record of all the money you spent treating your child’s injury. This will be important when you calculate the damages you suffered. A Roswell injury lawyer can help ensure you gather the necessary pieces of evidence for your child’s claim.
Speak with a Childcare Injury Attorney
Next, talk with an injury attorney to learn your next steps. The lawyer can give you a rough estimate of the value of your child’s case. Further, a lawyer draws on his or her experience with similar past cases to determine how much your case might be worth and to locate expert witnesses and other sources to help increase your likelihood of a favorable outcome.
Read More: What Are My Rights if My Child Was Injured at Daycare?
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON DAYCARE INJURIES?
One can only imagine all the ways children could be hurt at daycare:. The following are just a few ways a child may have been injured at a childcare center. If your child was not injured in one of these ways, consider speaking with a Roswell personal injury lawyer to make sure that you do not have to file a criminal charge instead of a personal injury claim.
Common childcare injuries include the following:
- Falling from playground equipment and fracturing/breaking bones
- Consuming unsafe materials such as cleaning supplies and being poisoned
- Bumping heads on desks or doors, causing a concussion
- Pinching fingers or limbs in malfunctioning playground equipment
- Jamming fingers in doorways or drawers
- Fighting or otherwise becoming injured by another child
- Choking on small toys
- Abuse from daycare staff
What should you prove in your claim?
That the Daycare Owed Your Child a Duty of Care
If you are attempting to show that the daycare was negligent and harmed your child, you must first establish that the daycare owed your child a duty of care. The duty of care that your daycare should have provided your child should be equivalent to the level of care that a typical daycare provides to children. For example, it might be common for daycare staff to separate certain age groups while children are playing on the playground to avoid injuring children. Some standards of care are regulated by statute, like the ratio of children to daycare workers.
That the Daycare Breached the Duty of Care
Second, you must show that the daycare failed to meet the appropriate standard of care. Perhaps it did not meet the standard of care because it did not have the correct safety procedures. For example, maybe it trained its staff poorly or failed to ensure that the grounds were as safe as possible.
That Your Child Received a Compensable Injury
The third element you must prove is that your child received an injury for which he or she can receive compensation. If your child came back crying because a daycare worker denied her an extra snack, you will not likely be compensated for her plight. Physical injuries normally suffice to show that your child suffered a compensable injury.
That the Daycare Directly and Proximately Caused Your Child’s Injury
Finally, either the daycare or an employee of the daycare must have caused the injury. You might wonder what happens when your child is injured by another child. This might occur if the children are not properly supervised. Once you have proven all four elements of negligence, you have successfully made your claim.
Read More: What is Negligence?
What if you waived your right to sue?
You might wonder whether you can sue the childcare center since you signed a waiver that claims to protect the center from liability for negligence. While daycares include that clause in their contracts to try and stop parents from suing them, it typically does not work, and courts find such clauses unenforceable. If courts did enforce those clauses, it might encourage daycares to invest as little as possible in the safety of children at the facilities. This would be an unsavory policy, so it is highly unlikely that you legally waived your right to sue.
What kind of compensation could you receive for a daycare injury?
Once you receive a settlement or judgment amount, the money will go to your child. You can usually use it to pay for the costs of medical bills, and the remaining compensation amount usually goes into a trust or special bank account until your child reaches a certain age (usually eighteen). The amount of compensation your child receives is based on the damages—economic and non-economic—that he or she suffered. A court might also award punitive damages to punish the daycare.
Economic Damages
Economic damages are the damages that you can calculate based off your receipts from doctor visits or evidence that you had to miss work to care for your injured child. They compensate you for the financial hardship you and your child suffered because of the daycare’s negligence. Talk with a personal injury lawyer to make sure you correctly calculate economic damages.
Non-economic Damages
Non-economic damages are harder to calculate because there is no receipt to show your child’s pain and suffering. However, they are no less important than economic damages; your child may have experienced personality changes or other aftereffects due to their injuries. The amount of non-economic damages your child suffered could be larger or smaller based on the severity of their injuries.
Punitive Damages
Courts award punitive damages to the victim whenever they find it important to punish the defendant for its actions. A court might find it important to punish a daycare for not paying enough attention or for failing to implement safety procedures that could prevent foreseeable harm. It would be bad public policy to let daycare centers continue to operate unsafely.
Let our Zinda law group lawyers help you recover for your child’s daycare injury
When daycares do not watch children closely enough, disaster can strike. Those businesses should be held accountable for their negligent acts or failure to act. If the daycare with which you entrusted your child failed to watch after your child and caused him or her to sustain an injury, you could seek maximum compensation. Let the attorneys at Zinda Law Group try to help you with your case.
Our Roswell lawyers want to help you with all aspects of your legal claim. Take advantage of a free consultation with an experienced attorney by calling (800) 863-5312 today. Plus, you don’t owe us anything unless we win your case. That is our No Win, No Fee Guarantee.
Meetings with attorneys are available by appointment only.
Jason Aldridge
Attorney
We have successfully represented clients in a wide variety of cases across the country.
Available 24 / 7|Free Consultation
