It would be a difficult task to find a child who had never suffered an injury. There is a difference, though, between an injury suffered due to clumsiness or true accidents and an injury suffered because of negligence. For example, it’s fairly normal for children to get hurt playing sports. A child might get hit with a baseball when he or she isn’t paying attention, for instance. What wouldn’t be normal is if the coach intentionally hit the ball as hard as he could toward the child or if the bat broke and shattered because it had been taped back together.
Pediatric injuries affecting children between 5 and 19 are most likely to be caused by motor vehicle accidents, which are preventable in most cases. In those situations, parents have a right to pursue compensation for their children.
Poisoning, on the other hand, affects children between the ages of 0 and 19. Two children die every day as a result of poisoning. A situation in which a parent might be able to hold someone liable for poisoning is if a teacher fails to lock a cabinet of medications or chemicals in the classroom, leading to a child accessing the potential poisons.
Children have a habit of getting hurt, but getting hurt because of a school’s negligence, neighbor’s negligence or another party’s errors is something that those individuals need to be held accountable for. No child should have to suffer as a result of another person’s behaviors, and that includes children of all ages. If they do, it’s their right to obtain compensation for their injuries.
Source: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, “What causes pediatric injury?,” accessed Oct. 06, 2017