A childhood choking injury is one of every parent’s major worries. Children’s curious personalities compel them to place a wide variety of small objects in their mouths. In 2001, this curiosity resulted in over 17,000 children under the age of 14 being treated in emergency rooms for choking. Even when children are eating food, rather than chewing on foreign objects, they are at a high risk for choking incidents.
At the offices of childhood choking-injury attorney Jeffrey Killino, we want to minimize preventable choking incidents as much as we can. We work to make sure negligent companies and caretakers are held responsible for the injuries they allow to happen. If your child has suffered a preventable choking injury, call us at 877-875-2927.
Common Causes of Choking
Certain objects are notorious for their common involvement in children’s choking injuries. Contact our childhood choking-injury lawyers if your child has been injured by:
A company may be responsible for choking incidents if it produces toys or children’s products that pose a choking hazard. Caretakers may be responsible if they fail to monitor children – especially while they are eating – or if they allow children to have toys or food inappropriate for their age.
The Tragic Consequences
Many choking incidents are handled quickly and efficiently. Sadly, this cannot be the case every time. A few percent of childhood choking victims do not survive their injuries. Even those who do survive may face terrible consequences, including brain damage from lack of oxygen.
Brain damage can cause life-long difficulties with thinking and learning, emotional regulation, or basic abilities like speech or vision. If your child is facing the difficult task of adjusting to a brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation, Attorney Jeffrey Killino can help.
Legal Liability for Choking Injuries
Choking injuries and deaths may occur while children are under the care of babysitters, neighbors, or child-care supervisors. Child-care facilities, for example, have been found legally responsible for choking injuries suffered by negligently supervised children who are under the facility’s care. In more than one such case, children who were not properly monitored died as a result of choking on pushpins found in their daycare centers.
In such cases, the supervisors as well as the daycare facility may be held liable if their negligence was a cause of a child’s choking injury or death. If, as in the pushpin cases, the supervisors failed to properly monitor the children, or the owners of the center allowed an environment that made the pushpins easily accessible to children, both may be held liable for the injuries sustained in a child’s choking accident.
- Negligence Actions
- The defendant must owe a duty of care to the plaintiff
- The defendant must have breached or violated that duty of care
- The breach of that duty must be a cause of the plaintiff’s injuries
- The plaintiff must have suffered an actual harm that is compensable under the law as a result of the defendant’s breach of duty
In order for an injured person to successfully pursue a negligence action, certain elements must be proved by a preponderance of the evidence.
Daycare facilities and their employees have a duty to exercise reasonable care toward the children in their centers. Reasonable care is the degree of care that a person of ordinary prudence would exercise under similar circumstances. When that duty is breached by inattentive supervision that results in a choking injury, such defendants may be held liable for the damages suffered by the plaintiff as a consequence.
Neighbors and babysitters who agree to watch or supervise children also have a duty to exercise reasonable care. This duty is not dependent upon the existence of a contract, such as might be entered into between a parent and a daycare center. Nor is it dependent upon a charge and payment for services. The agreement to watch over a child is all that is needed to create the duty of care required for an action in negligence.
Contact Us
To speak with children’s choking-injury lawyer Jeffrey Killino about the details of your case, contact our offices at 877-875-2927.
