A young child was seriously injured at a Missouri daycare after staff allowed a dangerous activity on a flight of concrete stairs, then failed to get her the medical attention she needed.
Our client was a young child at a Missouri daycare when staff permitted her and two other children to ride a wagon down a flight of concrete stairs. The wagon collided with the concrete, and our client suffered a serious head injury as a result.
What happened afterward was, in some ways, as troubling as the incident itself. Employees witnessed our client sustain a large bump on her head, bleeding, and visible changes in her behavior. Despite that, they did not call emergency medical services. She was later found confused, lethargic, and unsteady on her feet before finally being taken to an emergency room, where doctors determined she had suffered a skull fracture and a traumatic brain injury.
Our investigation, along with a parallel investigation by local police and childcare licensing authorities, uncovered a pattern that went well beyond a single lapse in judgment. The daycare had a history of multiple citations dating back to 2013 for the same type of negligent behavior. And once we demanded that evidence be preserved, the facility responded by producing an incomplete set of text messages and a video that had been materially altered.
Building a case against that kind of conduct meant establishing not just what happened on the stairs, but the pattern of negligence that preceded it and the effort to obscure the record afterward. The case resolved for $850,000, providing for a child whose injuries, and whose family's trust, had been badly betrayed.
A single bad incident can look like an isolated mistake. A pattern of citations going back years tells a different story, one of a facility that knew about the risk and didn't fix it. Investigating a provider's regulatory history is often essential to understanding what really happened.
Sending a prompt letter of representation and evidence preservation demand creates a record. When a facility responds by producing selective or altered evidence anyway, that response itself becomes part of the case.
Beyond the initial incident, a caregiver's failure to seek prompt medical attention for a visibly injured child is a separate and serious breach of duty, one that can compound the harm the child ultimately suffers.
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