Daughters had an Accident on Friends Trampoline!!! Now What???

Quentin

If you were injured in a road accident as a passenger in a car driven by a friend/relative and they were responsible for the "accident" why would you not sue them? That is what insurance is for!

tipsychick

Hi loobylou2

It was mentioned earlier on in the thread that you'd have until your daughter is 18 to decide whether or not to sue. Before you proceed on that basis, do double check that info is definitely correct. My understanding is that you have three years from the date of the accident to start proceedings. Certainly that would be the case with an adult making a personal injury claim but perhaps it is different for minors.

If your friend has household insurance which will have personal liability cover probably of several hundred thousand/million(s), then there's no reason at all why you and your friend should fall out over this. Accidents happen and that's how it will be viewed by the insurers. Your friend will probably just have to give a witness statement as to the circumstances of the accident and there won't be any unpleasant consequences for her.

Quentin

tipsychick wrote: »

It was mentioned earlier on in the thread that you'd have until your daughter is 18 to decide whether or not to sue. Before you proceed on that basis, do double check that info is definitely correct. My understanding is that you have three years from the date of the accident to start proceedings.

You are wrong.

The rules are different when minors are involved.

The three years limitation on making a claim doesn't start till the minor reaches 18. Thus this child has until she is 21 to make a claim.

racheyg

What goes around and all that. If you sue, then you will probably get sued in future by a friend when you are looking after one of their children.

I personally would never ever sue a friend because of an accident; and if I did, then my daughter probably wouldn't get asked anywhere ever again as it would be around the playground like wildfire.

It's a shame that the choice is there in the first place. Some poor unsuspecting souls who are good enough to give up their time,etc. Makes you wonder about parties etc.

racheyg

There of course is an argument that any parent leaving a child somewhere didn't do a thorough risk assessment of the situation in the first place, if something goes wrong.

If I, as a parent, leave my child with someone, it is my fault if they don't look after them properly, surely? They are my responsibility, not theirs. There is no contract or anything, so who is to say that they are to blame?

karren

I really hope that your littel girl feels better soon, and you are ok. forget about all the agrro, just concentrate on yourself and her, and it will all be ok.
Take care and love her lots as they are only small for such a short space of time xxx

caevans

Ridiculous! Accident = don't sue. sure your friend feels bad enough.

notakid

loobylou2 wrote: »

I"m not using my parents as an excuse, I"m not interested in the money and I"m certainly not being greedy!!! As I have said repeatedly I don"t want to sue my friend so stop accusing me of something which is not true and I have no reason whatsoever to lie about the situation!!!. I'm certainly not seeing poundsigns out of all this although I think my parents probably are which is why they are pressurising me to sue and threatening to do it themselves. I"m sorry to hear about your son but have to wonder about what you are saying about your own parents failing to realise that he was badly hurt. My daughter was in absolute agony on friday evening and there was no way that anybody could have failed to see that she"d badly hurt herself her arm was so swollen. I posted my thread to get opinions about what other people thought and because I am worried to death about my daughter and her long term future not so that I could be accused of being a greedy moneygrabber. Thank you very much.

I'm not saying anything about my parents; I'm pointing out we all make decisions to trust others and if an accident happens it doesn't automatically made others are to blame, esp. if they make the wrong call when under duress. The buck stops with me, I'm the parent. To explain the story further my son is ASD and deals with pain in a different manner to "normal" children, it was quite reasonable for my parents to react the way they did.

I don't understand why you are attaching so much importance to the opinions of someone who wasn't there, hasn't seen your child or know your friend, and that goes as much for strangers on a forum as it does your parents!

And tbh I'd be posting asking for experiences of small children suffering this type of injury, ways of making the healing time more enjoyable, what to expect, not asking about sueing.

marty1888

loobylou2 wrote: »

Hi Everybody

Sorry for the length of this post but I could really use some advice. I have 3 children aged 11, 9 and 3 and on Friday evening my youngest daughter (3) managed to fall out of the net opening on a trampoline belonging to one of my friends which had been left unfastened. It was an accident but it has left some nasty consequences. My daughter ended up breaking both her forearm and her elbow on her right arm ( she"s right handed as well) she has had to have an operation and wires put into her arm and was in hospital until yesterday lunchtime, she has to go back to the fracture clinic on wednesday and will need another operation in about 4 weeks time to remove the wires. The surgeons are saying that her arm is in a real mess and that there could be some long term damage. As if all this wasn"t bad enough I"m now being pressured by some of my relatives to sue my friend via her household contents insurance policy for personal liability because my daughter had the accident on her trampoline!!! My friend was actually doing a favour for my OH when he left my daughter with her, because I work he'd come to the train station to collect me and left my daughter with my friend because she was tired and he was worried that she"d fall asleep in the car and then be in a bad mood when she woke up!!!! We"ve done this lots of times previously without problem and I now feel absolutely dreadful about the entire thing, its bad enough that my daughter has been so badly hurt but the thought of having to sue my friend makes me feel sick although I realise I"ve got to put my daughters interests first and that my friend could be said to have been negligent because she didn"t make sure the trampoline opening was fastened and wasn"t supervising the children. She was previously a registered childminder as well which makes matters worse!!! Has anyone else ever been in this sort of situation and how did you cope??? I feel absolutely torn and am being pressured by my parents to sue my friend.

Sounds like a thinly veiled " I think Im gona sue" post disguised as "I dont really want to but.........."
Accidents happen, its as simple as that.

tipsychick

Quentin wrote: »

You are wrong.

The rules are different when minors are involved.

The three years limitation on making a claim doesn't start till the minor reaches 18. Thus this child has until she is 21 to make a claim.

Hi Quentin

I thought that was possibly the case.

Just out of interest, do you know how that actually works? Presumably the insurance company would need to be verified of the possibility of a claim now and then the child would have until she was 21 to decide whether to proceed? Given the potential time lapse involved, you'd definitely want to make sure you'd covered all your bases at this stage.