Father to sue after son falls on paintbrush.

[glazbagun]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_we...

Sad story, terrible in fact, but I can't see any way in which I would be able to prove negligence- the kid fell on a paintbrush!

Still; he's permanently disabled and blind in one eye, which will have massive economic and social consequences for the family and child. Is that just life stting on you, or is this what schools are insured for?

[FourWheelDrift]

So if he wins to avoid being stung again by a parent using blame transference the DoE will end up banning all painting in schools, and drawing because they use sharp pencils. And writing because they use pencils and pens.

They will have to go back to slates and chalk, but they might swallow the chalk so that might be dangerous as well.

Accidents happen, that's why they are called accidents. I hope his silly suing fails.

[Tangent Police]

Life can be st. It was a fkING ACCIDENT. st happens. It isn't licence for a big cheque.

[Silver993tt]

I'd like to see the system work like this. If party is going for damages of say, £100k, if they lose they would have to pay the £100k. That would stop many people/families/etc trying it on just in case they could get a nice big lump of cash. You'd have to have a concrete case to proceed.

Alternatively, since most say "I didn't go to court for the money", all money paid out should go to charity - then let's see how many would take it as far as a court case.

Also, where does this money come from? Everyone else in the street is paying for this via tax which is real money out of peoples pockets.

Edited by Silver993tt on Wednesday 2nd December 21:02

[Randy Winkman]

I feel sorry for the girl that bumped into him.

[Halb]

Sad story all round. It's not an easy situation. I feel the 2.5 mill is excessive though. It could cripple the council for years.

[johnfm]

Halb said:

Sad story all round. It's not an easy situation. I feel the 2.5 mill is excessive though. It could cripple the council for years.

How could it cripple the council?

They would have insurance.

[Silver993tt]

johnfm said:

Halb said:

Sad story all round. It's not an easy situation. I feel the 2.5 mill is excessive though. It could cripple the council for years.

How could it cripple the council?

They would have insurance.

yes and we all pay extra on our premiums to fund their claim. Again, it has to come from somewhere and it's yours & my pockets. Why £2.5 million? Would the kid have earnt that in his lifetime, probably not. How much of this will theparents spend on big holidays, fancy transport all in the name of their son? Who monitors how the money is spent? What about the interest earnt on the money? Even at 1% that's another £25k per year, in a high interest account that's 3-4% or £75-100K per year.

Edited by Silver993tt on Wednesday 2nd December 22:28

[RichBurley]

johnfm said:

Halb said:

Sad story all round. It's not an easy situation. I feel the 2.5 mill is excessive though. It could cripple the council for years.

How could it cripple the council?

They would have insurance.

They often self insure.

It's a very sad story. It sounds like the injuries were really serious. I don't think that we are really in a position to comment on whether it is "right" or "wrong", especially in a case like this.

My initial thoughts as a PI solicitor are that the accident was not forseeable, that although shorter paintbrushes might have reduced the risk of accident and injury, but that the failure to use short paintbrushes does not extend to negligence on the part of the Defendant. No reasonable risk assessment would have considered this. Even if it did, it would have assessed the risk as being "none, or very low", and the brushes would have beenused anyway.

I see the Claimant (or Pursuer, as I think it is, North of the Border), losing this one.

[s.m.h.]

I had an accident which caused major loss of sight in my right eye.
I had several weeks off school, time in various hospitals, missed my first year exams which decide which classes I could take the next year.
Kid that caused the accident said sorry at the time even though I was saying its dangerous what youre doing.
Not once did any of my family suggest suing anyone. The kid's father owned a few restaurants so wasnt skint, but we put it down to an accident.

Sure partial sight can be a pain, but tbh there are far worse off people in the world, just get on with it and work around whatever disability it is. After a while you dont give it a second thought.

[Kermit power]

I'm not sure that any of us can really comment on the rights and wrongs of this without a huge amount more information.

A friend of my wife's went in to hospital to have her second child. The hospital screwed up badly, and as a result, their son is extremely disabled. He has an estimated life expectancy of around 25 years, and will spend the whole of that time in a wheelchair requiring 24/7 care, with no possibility that he will ever work or have what we would consider a decent quality of (rather short) life.

Their compensation settlement is multiple millions. Yes, they do as a result have a nice big house, but they really rather need a nice big house to be able to accommodate a live-in care assistant and the various bits of equipment needed to provide that care and try to give him whatever quality of life they can. Needless to say, they would give up absolutely every single penny of it to have a normal, healthy child.

You could easily say that this was just an accident. The doctor didn't mean to change their lives for ever in a single fked-up moment, but he did. Their lives will never be the same. Is it unreasonable for them to get whatever support they need to try and make the most of their lot?

It may well be that this bloke in the article is equally deserving. It may also be that he is completely over-hyping the whole issue just to try and land a lottery win. Based on the information in the article, who knows?

Regardless of the individual arguments in this case, it's fair to assume that there is more - regardless of how minimally more it is - risk in giving kids long thin paintbrushes than there is in giving them short fat ones. I don't imagine there's any significant difference in cost, and I can't imagine it makes any difference to how well the average 10yr old can paint, so why would they not use the short, stubby ones?

[johnfm]

Silver993tt said:

johnfm said:

Halb said:

Sad story all round. It's not an easy situation. I feel the 2.5 mill is excessive though. It could cripple the council for years.

How could it cripple the council?

They would have insurance.

yes and we all pay extra on our premiums to fund their claim. Again, it has to come from somewhere and it's yours & my pockets. Why £2.5 million? Would the kid have earnt that in his lifetime, probably not. How much of this will theparents spend on big holidays, fancy transport all in the name of their son? Who monitors how the money is spent? What about the interest earnt on the money? Even at 1% that's another £25k per year, in a high interest account that's 3-4% or £75-100K per year.

Edited by Silver993tt on Wednesday 2nd December 22:28

Silver, he suggested it would cripple the council. I suggest it wouldn't. I agree that a series of claims may lead to increased premiums. As to the damages, the courts don't just pluck a figure out of thin air. Newspapers may do that, but expect that the insurer's lawyers and claimant's lawyers will have gone through lengthy calculations to determine costs of care, loss of amenity, pain and suffering etc etc etc based on many decades of case law.

As Rich says, unlikely to succeed in a negligence claim.

Either way, poor kid.

Edited by johnfm on Wednesday 2nd December 23:07

[nonegreen]

Sadly this is typical of the fartist community. I used to teach risk assessment to college lecturers and it was always the arty ones that thought it was not their responsibility to manage risk as a result of their activities. They honestly undulge thoughts like "Surely we don;t neet to examine the safety of the Royal Shakespeare Company"

In truth it is not rocket science to conclude that handing mini spears to little kids might pose a hazerd. Just the simple exercise of plotting likelihood v severity would have highlighted this. The corrective action of using shorter stubbier brushes or making the ends blunt would have been achieved easily and with a bit of initiative cost free. But no we have ruined yet another life beccause public sector workers have substandars brains. I think 2.5M will barely provide a decent standard of living for the kid. If the LEA is going to be crippled for years? Great, lets make up the shortfall with the speedhump budget.

[SJobson]

I have sympathy with the parents of the now-disabled lad. They will have to support a child who according to that article will be unable to lead an indepedent life.

However, he was clearly not going to be the brightest star in the first place if he managed to fall on a paintbrush so that it penetrated his brain through his eye socket. So if I were the judge I would reduce the level of damages awarded appropriately.

[Kermit power]

SJobson said:

I have sympathy with the parents of the now-disabled lad. They will have to support a child who according to that article will be unable to lead an indepedent life.

However, he was clearly not going to be the brightest star in the first place if he managed to fall on a paintbrush so that it penetrated his brain through his eye socket. So if I were the judge I would reduce the level of damages awarded appropriately.

Are you seriously saying you never fell over when you were a child?

[johnfm]

SJobson said:

I have sympathy with the parents of the now-disabled lad. They will have to support a child who according to that article will be unable to lead an indepedent life.

However, he was clearly not going to be the brightest star in the first place if he managed to fall on a paintbrush so that it penetrated his brain through his eye socket. So if I were the judge I would reduce the level of damages awarded appropriately.

idiot

[munroman]

SJobson said:

I have sympathy with the parents of the now-disabled lad. They will have to support a child who according to that article will be unable to lead an indepedent life.

However, he was clearly not going to be the brightest star in the first place if he managed to fall on a paintbrush so that it penetrated his brain through his eye socket. So if I were the judge I would reduce the level of damages awarded appropriately.

You have probably less faculties than the poor kid if you seriously think that he chose his fate, what a prick you are! (And the word is independent, while you are alluding to low intelligence.)

[BonzoGuinness]

johnfm said:

Silver, he suggested it would cripple the council. I suggest it wouldn't

I dunno, I live in North Lanarkshire and they seem to spend little enough as it is fixing the roads, maybe they don't have it in the coffers...



I jest, I'm sure the council are quite financially prudent

[grumbledoak]

Poor kid.

This sounds like a situation I think the Welfare State is/should be for. I'd far more gladly pay my fraction-of-a-penny a year to give him a life that he now cannot have than the many pounds I seem to waste on our underclass.

[ThunderSpook]

Strange that they left it so long to claim though! Reeks of a sudden realisation that the story could be twisted to earn the father a small fortune.