This irritates me so much I don't even know where to begin.
A woman is suing the Kanawha County Board of Education after her son was injured at school.
Amanda L. Wikel claims her son suffered injuries to his right arm when he fell from the playground equipment at Elk Elementary School, according to a complaint filed Oct. 15 in Kanawha Circuit Court.
Wikel claims the Kanawha County Board of Education had a duty to care for her son, including a duty of proper instruction, supervision and maintenance of its equipment and premises.
On Oct. 16, 2007, the Board of Education breached its duty by allegedly failing to properly instruct and supervise Wikel's son and by failing to properly maintain its equipment and premises, according to the suit.
As a result, Wikel's son suffered a severe fracture of the radial neck in his right arm and a dislocated ulnohumeral joint in his right elbow.
Wikel claims she and her son have suffered mental anguish and distress; pain and suffering; medical expenses; future lost earnings and lost earning capacity; future household services; aggravation, annoyance and inconvenience; and loss of enjoyment of life.
Wikel is suing for compensatory damages. Thomas H. Peyton of Peyton Law Firm is representing her.
The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib Jr.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number: 09-C-1935
Source: The WV Record
So a kid falls while playing, basically breaks his elbow, and it's grounds for a lawsuit? Give me a break. I can't count the number of times I got injured as a kid, and my parents never sued anyone, to my knowledge. My brother fell out of a tree on our neighbor's property when he was in first grade and broke his wrist. It was easily a twenty-foot drop. Lawsuits were the furthest thing from anyone's mind, and I think he's turned out pretty well — he's a doctoral student, an audiologist, and a military officer. Hell, in fact, Katie fell from some playground equipment at this exact same school and broke her arm. I don't think the school was negligent in any way when this happened, and I still don't. She is a normal and well-adjusted thirteen-year-old (for what that's worth), and the only mental anguish she suffered was when they x-rayed it and when they took her cast off.
I'm curious about the "future lost earnings" and "lost earning capacity" mentioned in the claim. I don't know how much I'm going to be making ten or fifteen years from now. No clue. That said, I'd love to peer into the crystal ball being used here. This is a kid who's not even in high school yet. I mean, how do you know what this kid's occupation would have been? He might have been a convenience store clerk, he might have been a nuclear physicist. There's no way you can tie any meaningful dollar amount to this. And, there's no realistic way to know that whatever he ends up being isn't what he was going to be anyway.
Sorry, this whole thing sounds like a stretch to me. I absolutely hate seeing our judicial system being abused like this. And getting kids involved makes it a hundred times worse, because it teaches them that pointing fingers and avoiding responsibility is an acceptable way to get by in the world. If everyone else is always to blame for everything, I guess you can just do whatever you want because it will always be somebody else's fault.
Of course, if everyone else does the same thing, for the same reasons, then it's nobody's fault... right?