Brown v North Lanarkshire Council, 2011 SLT 150
Citation: Brown v North Lanarkshire Council, 2011 SLT 150
Rule of thumb: If school pupils are learning in unorthodox ways, such as doing painting with the canvas on the floor, and someone gets hurt, is this a claim? Yes, this is an unorthodox method of teaching, and compensation has to be paid for injuries sustained.
Judgment:
The basic facts were that children were doing art in the classroom. They were not at desks and were painting on the floor. They were all moving around and interacting with each other. They were using paint brushes which had a sharp point and were sitting in tubs on the ground. One pupil collided with another pupil, and the pupil fell towards the ground and one of the paintbrushes tragically punctured his eye & brain as he landed with catastrophic results. The Court held that teachers have a duty to put safe systems in place for the children & monitor that they follow them, and that this was a failure to do so, thereby meaning that the pupil was owed damages for the injuries he sustained.
Ratio-decidendi:
‘Walker, Delict... ”A schoolteacher owes a duty to take reasonable care for the safety and health of the children under his charge, and must exercise care and forethought, having regard to their age, inexperience, carelessness and high spirits and the nature and degree of danger, not to subject them to avoidable risks of harm”, (Lady Dorrian referred to this as an accurate principle to describe a teacher’s duty).
‘[66] When one looks at the whole circumstances of use of the brush a real risk of injury emerges as foreseeable. A reasonable person in the position of the teachers would have taken steps to prevent that foreseeable risk of harm to Thomas. This could have been by the provision of different brushes, which seem to have been available for infants. It could readily have been by allowing the work to be done at a desk. The teachers suggested that the size of the work was such that it could not be done on a desk nor could it have been done on separate bits of paper which were later joined together. However, I think that it could have been done at in such a way. The evidence was that the children were filling in something which had already been drawn on the paper: I see no reason why that could not have been done individually by them. There was no persuasive reason why the task could not have been done at desks. I accordingly propose to sustain the first plea in law for the pursuer’, Lady Dorrian.
Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.