According to Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, more than 3.5 million children are injured each year while participating in sports or recreational activities. 775,000 of those young athletes require treatment in a hospital emergency room for their sports-related injuries. The leading cause of death from sports injuries is trauma to the brain, with nearly 300,000 youths receiving treatment for traumatic brain injuries caused by participation in a sport or other recreational pursuit annually.
Many of these accidents occur during school-sponsored athletics practices or events. Sports make school enjoyable and provide students with opportunities to socialize with their peers outside the classroom. However, there are risks involved on any court or field. When accidents do happen, schools can be held liable for damages.
When Are Schools Liable for Injuries Due to Sporting Events?
Participating in athletics comes with an inherent risk of harm. Pulled muscles, sprains, and concussions are commonplace and usually easy to treat. But sometimes an injury doesn’t happen in the normal course of practice or competition. When a coach or school district is negligent in their duty to care for students, they can be held liable for damages including medical bills, therapy, and other expenses.
Defective Equipment
Defective equipment is to blame for some sports injuries. A plaintiff could pursue damages through a product liability lawsuit against the equipment manufacturer. They would need to show that defects in the equipment were the cause of injuries. If the plaintiff can also prove that the school was aware that the products or equipment it provided to students were faulty or defective, the district can be named as a defendant in a personal injury suit as well.
Poor Maintenance
Schools, like all public businesses, are tasked with keeping their facilities in good working condition. Unfortunately, as districts try to do more with less money, maintenance is often neglected. School boards can be liable for injuries if they don’t address facility hazards in a timely fashion and take measures to keep players and spectators safe from harm. Poorly maintained fields, courts, and swimming pools pose a risk for student-athletes.
Coach Negligence or Misconduct
A coach or assistant who doesn’t fulfill the duty of care owed to student-athletes can be named in a personal injury lawsuit. Even when harm is not intentional, coaches may fail to act in a way that protects players from serious injury or illness. For example, ignoring heat index warnings and water break guidelines has resulted in tragic outcomes, including heat stroke and death.
Coaches may also fail to appropriately respond to injuries or health concerns, worsening a player’s condition in the process. For instance, coaches who continue to play athletes after a suspected concussion face liability if the player later collapses or experiences complications because the coach unreasonably endangered the student-athlete and showed disregard for player safety.
Since districts are responsible for vetting, training, and supervising coaching staff, they have vicarious liability for the actions of employees they hire. Consequently, should a coach be found negligent, or if the school’s practices did not properly prepare them to recognize warning signs of injury, the school district is on the hook for damages. An attorney will seek to determine whether an injury could have been avoided if the school or coach had exercised reasonable care.
Weather-Related Negligence
Schools are obligated to follow strict safety guidelines meant to protect students from weather-related illnesses and injuries such as heat stroke and electrocution. Temperature rules, water breaks, and lightning delays ward off preventable injuries. When school staff members don’t follow the rules, they are responsible for any harm that comes to athletes.
Mitigation Negligence
Even when sports accidents aren’t directly tied to negligence, schools can still be sued if they don’t have effective mitigation strategies in place when something does go wrong. For example, a district is responsible if an athlete’s injury worsened due to the lack of proper response or resources. Districts should have emergency response plans that outline resources available and actions to be taken when a player is injured, which may include:
- treatment by athletic trainers
- evaluation and stabilization by on-site paramedics at games
- the presence of emergency vehicles at sporting events
- access to defibrillators and trained staff who know how to use them
- administration of CPR
Failure to Screen Athletes
Schools are also required to limit a student’s participation in athletics if there is a medically documented or suspected reason to do so and when allowing them to play could aggravate an existing condition. Students should be barred from athletics until they are cleared by a medical professional when:
- neck and spine injuries are involved or suspected
- they’ve been diagnosed with a heart condition
- an actual or suspected concussion is present
- they’re recovering from an illness like mononucleosis
Special Considerations for Sports Injury Liability and School Districts
Sports injuries are not only painful and expensive to treat, they also carry the potential to cause permanent damage to the body. Failure to take preventative action or to intervene before serious damage occurs could end an athlete’s career or lead to lifelong disabilities such as paralysis or traumatic brain injury. Liability waivers and recognition by the legislature as government entities are two methods used to shield school boards from high-dollar liability payouts.
Waivers
School districts in Louisiana and Texas attempt to protect themselves from sports-injury-related liability by requiring participants and their guardians to sign release waivers. Waivers state that athletes are aware of and assume the risks of participation and forfeit their right to hold school districts responsible for injuries that may occur.
Even if a waiver is on file, it’s still possible to seek damages from a school. Louisiana is one of only three states in the country that doesn’t recognize pre-injury waivers when a catastrophic injury or death occurs. Waivers also don’t stand up in court when negligence is the cause of the victim’s injuries.
Government Entity Status
Since school districts are recognized as local units of government, they are not subject to the same statutes of limitations as private citizens. For example, the Texas Tort Claims Act requires plaintiffs’ attorneys to provide defendants notice that they are being sued. Unfortunately, deadlines to do so vary widely across the state, with some as short as 45 days from the injury. The act also caps the amount that plaintiffs could recover in damages from a school board if the district is found liable.
