No parent ever hopes to receive a phone call from their child’s daycare saying that their child has been injured. This scenario would be a nightmare for most. Parents trust daycare centers to keep their kids safe, but accidents and injuries do happen in these facilities. While children are notoriously accident-prone, many daycare injuries could have been prevented or at least lessened in severity with appropriate care. Children are too often harmed due to the negligence of daycare staff. If your child was hurt at daycare, you may want to consult an attorney about your options for pursuing compensation. Further investigation may be needed to determine the cause of your child’s injury.

What Should I Do if My Child Gets Injured in Daycare?

You may be experiencing a range of emotions after learning that your child was injured at daycare. Parents are often shocked, fearful, and angry during the aftermath of a daycare accident. It can be difficult to remember the steps you need to take. Generally, steps you should take after a daycare injury include:

• Medical care - Make sure that your child receives prompt medical treatment first. Getting a thorough medical workup is especially important for very young children who may not be able to adequately describe what they are feeling or where their pain is.
• Request footage - Daycare centers should have cameras everywhere. If possible, ask for video footage of the accident. If the daycare refuses to provide this, it should make you a bit suspicious that there is something they are not telling you.
• Witnesses - Make note of which staff members were working that day, and take down the names of any other adults who may have been present at the time, such as other parents or volunteers.
• Photos - Take pictures of your child’s injury. If you get to the daycare quickly enough, it may also make sense to take pictures of the area where the accident occurred. If faulty playground equipment, for example, caused the injury, you may later need these images to show how the accident occurred.
• Details - The more information you can get about how your child got hurt, the more it could help your case later.

Calling an attorney is perhaps the most important step. Investigating daycare accidents can be challenging. Children do not always make the strongest witnesses, and negligent staff members may hesitate to truthfully explain what happened. Having an experienced attorney step in can be enormously helpful.

When it comes to recovering compensation after a car accident, things may seem like they should be simple. Another driver was being careless. They crashed into you. They pay for your injuries and other expenses related to the accident. Rarely, however, is the actual process of filing a claim and receiving what you are rightfully owed as uncomplicated as it should be.

There are a number of sometimes complex legal issues surrounding car accident claims that may require the attention of a skilled lawyer to resolve. From proving the cause of a wreck to dealing with an uninsured driver, a number of issues can further complicate your case. It is best to have complex car accident claims handled by a qualified attorney.

Reasons Your Car Accident Case Could Become Complicated

Motor vehicle crashes are inherently chaotic events. Unfortunately, the aftermath can be quite chaotic as well depending on all the facts and surrounding circumstances. If any of these issues are present in your car accident case, you will probably need an attorney’s help to resolve them:

Parents expect daycare centers to be safe places for young children. Toddlers and babies in particular require extensive supervision. Anyone who has spent time around a little one that age can tell you that they are prone to hurting themselves when not watched carefully in a safe environment. This is why child care professionals are required to follow strict safety standards to minimize the risk of a child getting hurt. If your child was put in an unsafe situation and got injured at daycare, you will want to speak to a qualified personal injury attorney as soon as possible to put you on the path to recovering compensation.

What Injuries Are Children Most at Risk for in Day Care?

While all children will occasionally come home with minor scrapes or bruises from falling down on the playground, most more serious injuries in daycare centers are preventable. You may have a case for pursuing compensation if your child sustained one of these injuries in a child care facility:

• Choking - Staff is expected to keep the children’s environment free from choking hazards. If toys offered by the facility are not appropriately screened, they could come with small parts that a small child could choke on. Grapes, hot dogs, and other easy to choke on foods should be appropriately cut in half lengthwise before being served.
• Deep lacerations - Minor scrapes are normal - deep cuts that require stitching or gluing are not. A serious cut could be the result of an exposed nail or sharp edge that should have been covered. Or, a staff member may have negligently entrusted a young child with a dangerous sharp object like non-safety scissors.
• Broken bones - Playground equipment should be age-appropriate and safe, and children must be adequately supervised to ensure they are playing safely. Falls from slides, jungle gyms, and other tall equipment may suggest that the playground was unreasonably dangerous for children in that age range or that the children are being allowed to misuse equipment by climbing or horseplaying.
• Burns - Nothing hot enough to cause significant burns should be accessible to children in daycare centers. If your child was burned, it is extremely likely that she was put in a dangerous position with an unsafe object.

Having a child get hurt in a child care facility can be horrifying. You trust your daycare center to keep your child safe while you are not there, so finding out they allowed your child to be injured can shake you. Fortunately, you may be able to pursue compensation.

Chicago winters are serious business. Extreme temperatures, high winds, and heavy snowfalls bring yearly dangers to our city’s residents. Thousands of Illinois residents slip and fall on the ice every year. Most get up laughing, but an unlucky few suffer serious injuries. A Chicago city ordinance requires anyone who owns or has charge of a property to clear ice and snow from the sidewalk in front of their home or business.  Property owners and renters could face municipal fines for failing to shovel. However, this does not necessarily mean that anyone who fails to comply with this law is automatically liable to anyone who slips and falls in the snow on their sidewalk.

If you got hurt when you slipped and fell, it is best to talk over your options with a qualified attorney. Slip and fall cases are rarely as cut-and-dry as they may seem, and an attorney investigation may be needed to prove the cause of your accident.

What if I Got Hurt Because a Property Owner Did Not Shovel?

Chicago does have a municipal ordinance requiring anyone who has charge of a home or business that abuts a public sidewalk to remove ice and snow accumulations. However, the purpose of this law is more closely related to accessibility than safety. When this law was written, lawmakers were concerned with making sure that our sidewalks are clear for those who would otherwise have trouble making their way around Chicago. People who use mobility assistive devices like wheelchairs, as well as senior citizens and the visually impaired, may struggle to move about the city if the sidewalks are covered in snow. While clear sidewalks do tend to have the effect of reducing slip-and-fall accidents, that is not the primary purpose for the statute.

No one heads out for a fun night at the bar expecting to be attacked and injured. When alcohol is involved, minor disputes can easily escalate into a physical altercation. If you were injured after being attacked in a bar, the bar could be liable depending on the facts and circumstances surrounding your case. It is best to seek medical attention and then contact an attorney quickly. Witnesses will need to be interviewed as soon as possible before they start to forget what they saw, and other types of evidence may need to be preserved sooner rather than later.

Under What Circumstances Is a Bar Liable for Injuries From Fights?

Illinois bars have a duty to take reasonable measures to keep their patrons safe. While no bar can prevent every fight that breaks out, they must take certain precautions, such as removing belligerent patrons. If a bar has failed to use reasonable precautions to prevent violence, and you are injured as a result, the bar could be held liable. In Illinois, a bar or nightclub could be held responsible if you were injured on their premises under these circumstances:

• Excessive force by bouncer - Bouncers and nightclub security guards are not permitted to use more force than necessary under the circumstances. Bar patrons are sometimes injured when a bouncer grabs or throws them in the course of breaking up a fight, or when a bouncer becomes violent while ejecting a customer.
• Failure to provide security - Drinking establishments are expected to provide a reasonable level of security to protect patrons from the threat of violence. If the person who attacked you was acting belligerent, threatening you or other customers, or creating a disturbance, the bar should likely have removed that customer before things escalated to the point where you were physically attacked.
• Dram Shop Act - In Illinois, if an establishment serves alcohol to a person who becomes intoxicated and causes injury to another person, the establishment could be held liable under the Dram Shop Act.

If you were injured as a result of violence in a bar or nightclub, you will want to get in touch with a lawyer promptly. Bar fights are often chaotic events involving multiple parties and witnesses. It is especially important to begin documenting the events quickly, as people’s memories tend to fade quickly especially when they were intoxicated at the time.