What was a schoolyard game turned sour for the Montreal School Services Center (the Montreal School Board at the time), which must now pay $11,700 to parents whose child has lost a tooth following an accidental blow from a shovel.
The story goes back to the winter of 2017: after school, 9-year-old Olivier* has fun in the courtyard of Saint-Pierre-Claver school under the supervision of daycare educators.
A small group of students are playing “police-robber,” reads the judgment handed down this week in the Small Claims Court.
“He impersonated a thief with his hands tied behind his back and he was on the ground. While turning his head, another participant who was holding a plastic shovel accidentally hit him with it on the mouth. Olivier then lost a tooth, ”says judge Gatien Fournier.
The person in charge of the daycare service believed that the child had lost a baby tooth and did not make much of it. However, when arriving at school to pick up her son, the mother found instead that it was one of his incisors, an adult tooth.
The woman, a teacher, “knows that in such a situation, it is urgent to act to promote the chances of reimplantation of the tooth”.
Liability of daycare
The lawsuit alleged that the child care center should have promptly notified the parents and that the staff should have looked for the lost tooth and then “if they find it, put it back in place or he preserves it in cold milk”.
It hasn’t been done. It was not until the mother arrived that the tooth was searched and found, and the child was rushed to the dentist.
The latter felt that it would have been preferable for the child to be seen more quickly, “ideally within half an hour of the accident, to increase the chances of success”.
A childcare worker who was present that day also acknowledged that it should have been checked which tooth it was, then notified the parents without delay as it was an adult tooth.
Conviction
The judge concluded that the school staff’s inaction “reduced, if not destroyed, the chances of success of the tooth reimplantation treatment” and condemned the CSSDM to pay the sum of $11,701, mainly orthodontic fees paid by parents.
On the other hand, he does not consider that the CSDM committed a fault by letting the children play the “police-thief” game.
There is no evidence that he “was dangerous or posed any risk to [les enfants] requiring the intervention of educators,” wrote Justice Fournier.
In its defence, the Montreal School Board called one of the members of the management to testify, who argued that the police-robber game “is practiced in all schools”, but that it is not necessary to “s’ tie the hands behind the back to play it”.
*Fictional first name. As it is a minor, we do not name it.