Liability For Injuries Caused By Bullying

Bullying has a serious and often long lasting impact on all of us, but most particularly, on our children. Children who grow up bullied, often drop out of school, or can even face a life involved in the criminal system—and that’s aside from the physical harm that often accompanies bullying.

Not Just Child’s Play

When bullying happens to our children we often think there is nothing that we can do. But in fact, in many cases, there are parties that can be held liable for physical injuries that come from bullying.

Bullying is not simply child’s play, nor is it just “kids being kids.” While it is true that many kids who bully don’t realize what they’re doing or the impact of what they are doing, any time there are kids involved, there are often adults charged with the obligation to monitor and safeguard those kids, and that’s no different with bullying.

Where Did it Happen?

An initial question when bullying leads to injury, is where did the bullying occur, and who, if anyone, was responsible for monitoring or supervising the children. In this way, bullying claims are much like negligent supervision claims—adults in any capacity, whether at a sporting event, extracurricular activity, in school, or when they have kids over their house, have an obligation to watch, identify, and stop bullying behavior.

Another question may be whether any adult was watching, or observed the behavior, and whether the adult or adults should have been monitoring more closely than they were.

Bullying in School

In a school setting, where kids often bully outside of the eyes of teachers or administrators (and in fact in some cases, where bullying may even happen off of school grounds), a child or parent may have to inform school administration of what is happening, and who is bullying, before the school has an obligation to step in and stop the behavior.

For this reason, schools also have a legal obligation to publicize how bullied kids can report bullying. Schools must make it easy for both kids and parents to report threats and bullying.

Bullying in schools is especially problematic, because we know that kids who are bullied may report to violence in or out of school, if the behavior isn’t addressed quickly.

Knowledge May Not Matter

Other times, adults can be assumed to have liability even if they don’t actually know about bullying.

Imagine an adult who has 10 young children over their house. That clearly is an insufficient child-adult ratio, and thus, “I didn’t know it was happening” may not be a sufficient defense for an adult who allows bullying to happen in their home.

Defenses to Bullying Claims

A common defense to bullying is the same thing that kids say to each other: the child being bullied, started it, instigated the bullying, or did or didn’t do something to cause the bully to engage in the behavior.

This is almost never a valid defense. Unlike adults, children cannot be held liable for their behavior, and thus, regardless of the behavior of the bullied child, that child’s behavior is irrelevant in a bullying claim.

Was your child injured because of bullying? Contact our Rhode Island injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 today.

Sources:

educationworld.com/a_admin/bullying-school-legal-liability.shtml

publicjustice.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Bullying-Litigation-Primer-Fall-2017-Update-FINAL.pdf