personal injury attorney new york

When you send your children off to camp, the hope is that they will be in a safe environment cared for by individuals who will treat them as their own children. Leav & Steinberg was retained by the family of a 14 year old boy who was at sleep away camp in the summer of 2015. He was a camper but also being given the opportunity to be a Counselor-in-Training (CIT). That role usually includes working in the cafeteria or with other campers. This camp allowed our client to work in the kitchen. They allowed him to fry eggs, boil corn and handle other hot items. He was not old enough under the law to have “working papers” and was given no instruction.

One day he was told to boil corn and take it off the stove onto a rolling cart. He did this as told without any supervision. The water spilled onto his leg and into his sneaker. He immediately ran outside and took his sneaker off. A nurse on duty came over and told him it was nothing too serious, really just a first degree burn. She assured him things would be okay and put a band aid on it and some ointment. She called his parents and told them the same. A hospital was only 15 minutes away by car. She never took him.

As days passed, she continued to change the dressing and assured him it was okay. Sadly, it was not. Approximately 5 days later a doctor for the camp showed up, saw the boy’s foot and immediately told him to call his parents and have them come and get him. His father picked him up and what he saw shocked him. He rushed him back home and right to the burn unit at a local hospital. He remained there for several days undergoing a debridement procedure where the damaged skin is removed in hope of healthy skin growing back. He was restricted from school sports activities for the following semester of school.

As the summer is winding down, I was thankful that my three kids will be returning home from sleep away camp this weekend. Seven weeks of organized fun, controlled environment with loving and caring counselors and directors to make sure that my kids and others are safe. As a personal injury lawyer, I am always concerned about the safety of individuals and was thinking of some of the recent camp cases my firm has handled.

When you sign up to send your child to camp, you are entrusting them with the duty to provide your child with a safe and reasonable environment. Camp activities include, sports, waterfront activities, art, music, as well as many intercamp Olympics and color war. Some of the greatest memories kids have are those made during these summers.

Yet, many camps fail to provide the most basic when it comes to reasonable care for the safety of its children. Recently, I represented a young boy who was at a camp. They had a banana boat ride. Many of you may know that this is the ride where 4-5 kids sit on a banana shaped tube and a motor boat pulls the kids. The goal was usually a fun ride along the lake. Of course, the counselors and probably the kids, in an effort to make it more “exciting”, have the motor boat drive in a way to cause the banana boat to twist and turn in the wake and knock the kids into the lake. Seems harmless. Well it would be if you provided the kids with safety rules and guidelines. What if the child sitting in the front of the boat, closest to the rope, is not given any hand signals in which to convey that they are not feeling safe or feel like they may fall forward into the rope towards the engine of the boat pulling the banana float. The sound of the engine and the noise from the movement is such that you cant verbally communicate. Such was the case and my client suffered a severe laceration (over 100 sutures) from his shoulder around his arm onto his forearm. This left a lasting scar and permanent residual problems. Leav & Steinberg, LLP was able to prove that the activity was being performed in a dangerous way with inadequate supervision and training of the counselors and a lack of communication with the campers. Though the camp felt this was not a case, we were successful in proving otherwise and resulted in a significant award for the child and a recovery of his medical bills.