Premises Liability
A young boy was playing on the playground of his Washington, DC preschool during recess when, unsupervised, he fell from a set of monkey bars and fractured his left wrist and elbow. He was transported to a hospital where he underwent surgery to pin the fractures and irrigate his wounds. Unfortunately, his wounds were unable to be closed and necessitated painful skin grafts. He required treatment for over a year, and sustained permanent scars on his left wrist and thigh. The teacher and school denied responsibility, arguing that the child was warned numerous times not to play on the monkey bars and that at the very moment the incident occurred, a teacher’s aide was instructing him to stop playing on the monkey bars. We filed suit, investigated the playground, conducted numerous depositions, interviewed parents of other children enrolled in the school, retained a prominent expert witness, and ultimately established that the monkey bars were unsafe for a child of the boy’s age. We also established that the school had been warned of the danger prior to the incident. As a result, after extensive litigation, we recovered $290,000 for our client.