PRODUCT LIABILITY DAMAGES PAID BY LA COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT TO STUDENT INJURED WHEN DEFECTIVE GATE FELL ON HIM IN SCHOOL YARD
Negligence and defective products can cause students to sustain serious injuries in the school yard. We recently settled a product liability case involving a premises liability for $125,000 against William S. Hart School District in Canyon Country, California when an old gate fell on a student, age 12, and broke his ankle. A public school is a governmental entity, and an injury lawyer must prove that the school (a) caused the negligent condition or (b) that they had sufficient time to discover and fix the defective condition in order for there to be premises liability or product liability.
In this case the gate had been installed over twenty years ago when the school was built, and separated the school yard from the parking lot. The Canyon Country school district, located in Los Angeles County, claimed they never had a problem with the gate in the past and that there were no prior complaints. Our client, a twelve year old boy, was playing with other students near the gate and claimed that the gate was closed. They wanted to go to the playground on the other side of the parking area, so he and his two friends pulled the sliding gate to open it, and it fell off its tracks and landed on top of the student. It was a heavy iron gate that required four people to lift it off the student. The student suffered damages, including a broken ankle, as a result of the incident. A school yard monitor who was also a teacher said she saw what happened. She claimed that she saw the three boys playing on the fence, and told them to get away from the gate. Two of the boys agreed that they had been playing on the gate before, but not when, it fell on their friend. Although our client suffered an injury from the defective gate, he fully recovered, and is now able to play and do everything he was able to do before the accident.
