Florida Playground Injury Lawsuits

Who’s liable for damages if your child was hurt on the playground?

Your child suffered an injury while playing on the playground. Now what? Is it the property owner’s fault? The babysitter? Your own? Here’s how to break down what to do and how to assess liability for a Florida playground accident.

Playgrounds are the essence of childhood. 

One thing that makes them so ubiquitous is that once they’re there, they’re there. Most playgrounds require only basic maintenance and upkeep and are often in public spaces, which means any child can play at their neighborhood playground any time. 

Parents and caregivers take their children to playgrounds at their local school, town or city park, place of worship, or just about anyplace they can find… and it’s a great place for a child to burn off some energy while the parent might (if they’re lucky) have a moment to sit on a bench and watch the fun. Particularly in Florida, playgrounds are plentiful because the weather allows for them to be the perfect place for year-round entertainment. 

We all hope and expect we can take our children to the playground and return home in largely the same condition as we started, except for maybe dirtier clothes, hands and faces. 

And yet… playgrounds yield a surprising number of injuries. If your child gets seriously hurt while playing, who’s at fault? Can you file a lawsuit to recover damages?

Florida playground injuries

We can anticipate the typical playground injuries—falling off jungle gyms or monkey bars or an unfortunate incident on a teeter-totter or with a tetherball are pretty standard. Parents, schools, and doctors see these types of accidents all the time. The CDC reports that more than 200,000 children a year go to emergency departments for a playground-related injury. 

Of those trips to the ER, a little less than half (45%) are severe injuries like broken bones, concussions, traumatic brain injury, traumatic amputations and internal injuries. About 75% of non-fatal playground injuries happen on public playgrounds like schools and parks.

Who’s liable for a playground injury?

Liability will always hinge on the circumstances of the accident. 

The basis for personal injury law is that it’s designed to make the plaintiff (injured person) whole, or to restore them to the financial condition they would be in if the accident hadn’t happened. 

In other words, your child might fall on the playground while in care of their babysitter. If they get a scraped knee that requires some soap and water and a bandage, there’s no cost for medical treatment. You might be angry at the babysitter because you believe they weren’t watching your child closely enough, but you can’t sue them because the injury didn’t cost you money (you can, however, find another babysitter). 

By contrast, if your child fell while hanging upside down on the monkey bars, they might sustain a head or spine injury that costs a lot of money for diagnostics like CT scans or MRI, rehabilitative therapy, other treatment, or even surgery. It might cost you in time off from work to care for your child as they recover, and it might even leave your child with a lasting disability. 

If you can prove that the babysitter was not watching your child closely at the time when they fell, you might be able to recover these costs through a lawsuit against the babysitter for negligent supervision. 

If your child’s injury is because of a defect on the property or playground equipment, you would have to find out who was responsible for maintaining (or maybe manufacturing) the area in order to file a lawsuit.

A lawsuit involving the premises of a public playground (like a park or school) likely involves suing a government agency, like your town or city’s parks and recreation department or the school district. The rules for how and when to sue a government agency are different from other types of private entities (like a person or business), so it’s important to seek the advice of a Florida personal injury lawyer for guidance.

Types of playground liability lawsuits

There are several possibilities for how a playground injury can be handled. If you consult a lawyer following an injury, they will tell you that there are three primary grounds for a playground-related injury lawsuit.

1. Defective design or manufacture of equipment (i.e. product liability claim)

Product liability is the area of law that governs injuries caused by defective products or manufacturing. If an injury is caused because of a factor related to the manufacture or design of the playground equipment, it would be a product liability lawsuit.

There are three types of product liability lawsuits:

• Manufacturing defect. A defectively manufactured item left the manufacturer in a condition other than the one intended. To put it another way, some error occurred during the manufacturing process that caused the product to become unsafe. In the context of playground equipment, this could be something like the wrong types of screws being used on a part that holds the equipment together, or if a critical component became cracked, broken, or somehow weakened during the manufacturing process.
  
• Defective design. A product is defectively designed if it fails to perform as safely as a reasonable person would expect. In other words, nothing went wrong during the manufacturing process, the design of the product is simply dangerous.
  
• Failure to warn. Manufacturers have a duty to warn users of the dangers inherent in their products.
  
  Manufacturers don’t have to warn about every conceivable danger. Rather, manufacturers must only warn about dangers that occur while the product is being used as intended or that can reasonably be anticipated.
  
  For instance, a spinning ride on a playground might require a sign warning the user that they must hold on to a certain handle while riding. The manufacturer cannot guarantee that the child will follow the instructions, but the warnings must be obvious.

2. Premises liability

Premises liability is the area of law for injuries that happen as a result of a hazardous condition on property. 

For example, playgrounds are required to have certain types of ground covering. Some use rubber mulch, pea gravel, sand, wood chips, or engineered wood fibers. 

If a child is injured in a fall and the ground cover was not approved for playground use, deep enough, etc., the property owner could be at fault.

Premises liability could also apply to the maintenance of playground equipment. 

The property owner or manager is responsible for the safe maintenance of a public playground. This includes parks, schools, other municipal grounds, etc. It also includes the homeowner if a child is injured playing on backyard playground equipment.

If a piece of equipment breaks and causes an injury, this could also be the fault of the property owner if it’s the result of poor maintenance. It’s the responsibility of the property owner to ensure that all equipment is in good working order. 

Sometimes, things break. It happens. When it does, it’s the responsibility of the owner or property manager to make a visitor aware that the equipment isn’t safe and take appropriate measures to repair. This could be installing yellow caution tape, orange traffic cones, or other signs and signals that would indicate that the area is unsafe and is not meant to be used for a temporary period of time. The management might also be responsible for installing signs letting users know that the playground is slippery or unsafe in certain types of weather conditions.

3. Negligent supervision

Every parent has their own methods for deciding if their child is old enough or mature enough to play alone on the playground—they might consider factors like the child’s physical capabilities for climbing, etc., their maturity with respect to interactions with other adults, the playground’s proximity to home or school, or other things. 

Very young children should always be supervised by an adult or responsible older child when using a playground. 

Children don’t understand their own strength, speed or limitations. They don’t have the life experience to understand certain types of risk—they don’t necessarily realize that they’ve climbed too high or swung too fast.

The adult must cater their level of supervision to the age of the children, the type of playground, and the needs of the particular children in their care. For example, a capable babysitter who takes a toddler to the playground at the park would be expected to be within arm’s length if the child climbs, expecting that a very young child would not be able to navigate the equipment safely.

School-aged children, on the other hand, usually outnumber the playground aides or teachers during recess and it would be expected that they can climb, swing and play appropriately for a playground designed for children that age. It is the recess aide’s job to watch for unsafe behavior, but older children would be expected to have more freedom to play and the aide doesn’t need to be within arm’s reach.

If your child was in the care of a babysitter, at school, with another child’s parent, or any other adult, this could become an issue. If the adult was not behaving responsibly and attending to your child in a way that was appropriate for the child’s age, skills, and the situation, then you might be able to sue them for negligent supervision related to your child’s playground injury.

Can you prevent a Florida playground injury?

Sometimes, accidents just happen. They are part of life, and although we might want to keep our children in a protective bubble all the time, they are going to live—and might get hurt doing it. 

But there are ways you can reduce the likelihood of an injury.

Avoid jewelry or loose strings

As your children head out for playground time, have them avoid clothes that have dangling strings or are very loose. Remove necklaces, long scarves, dangly earrings, or other accessories that could get tangled in playground equipment.

Check the equipment

You’re not a playground engineer, but you can look for obvious hazards like rusty metal, broken parts or other pieces that might be loose or hanging. If you spot a hazard, report it to whoever does the playground maintenance, whether it’s a school, municipality, or other entity.

If there is debris on the ground, remove it before allowing children to play.

Talk about safety with your children

Talk to your children about when they should walk, not run, and about how high might be too high to climb for their age and physical capabilities. Make sure that they understand sharing space with other children and that they should never push or shove another child while using playground equipment. Likewise, if another child is pushing or shoving, make sure your child knows they are empowered to leave the situation and tell an adult that there’s a problem before someone gets hurt.

Ensure adult supervision

If you’re the adult in charge, watch your children while they play. If you’re sending them to the playground in care of someone else, make sure that person is responsible in managing your child’s safety.

What if my child does get hurt while on a Florida playground?

The first step after any injury is to seek medical treatment. 

If your child has been injured because of someone’s negligence, you might decide to file a lawsuit. You can read more about guidelines for filing a lawsuit on behalf of a child.

Finally, consult a skilled, compassionate, experienced Florida personal injury lawyer. Your lawyer can guide you through the legal process, including nuances in the law as related to children or government agencies.