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A school is going on an excursion. The child is given the permission slip to take home and get signed by his legal guardian, but he forges the signature instead. On the excursion, he gets injured. Who is legally responsible for the child? Is it the school (since the waiver is void, and by default the school is responsible for the child when a roll is taken) or the parent (since the school sincerely thought the parent had signed the waiver and if the waiver was correctly signed then the parent would be responsible)?

Preferred jurisdiction Australia; I will accept any answer however.

curiousdannii
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stickynotememo
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3 Answers3

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So many things were not addressed, so a precise answer is not possible.
But to try to raise the proper questions you should be thinking about:

Should the school have known the permission slip was forged?
Was the forgery particularly bad, and the school was lax in not examining it? Did the student have a history of forging slips that the school should have been aware of?

If the school was negligent in accepting an obviously bad signature, they may find their exposure is increased. If the school had no reasonable way to know the slip was forged, they were acting reasonably in taking the student on an excursion.

Was the injury typical, foreseeable and recoverable?
Such as a broken ankle on a hike? Minor accidents happen even when all reasonable precautions are taken. The injury will heal with time and care.

Was the activity that lead to the injury inherently risky / dangerous?
There is definitely a question of if the school took all reasonable precautions. Even if permission was legitimately given, the school is responsible for taking reasonable precautions, especially if the activity has inherit and obvious dangers. (for example, river-rafting or rock climbing)

What sort of "responsibility" are you interested in?
If you're asking who is financially responsible for the cost of treating the injury, then regardless of how it occurred, it would likely fall to the child's health insurance (presumably provided by the parents).

If the school was truly negligent in allowing a forged permission slip to a dangerous activity, then they could be found responsible for extraordinary costs associated with the injury, other costs (pain, suffering, loss of opportunity, emotional consequences, etc) and perhaps even punitive damages.

If you're suggesting that someone might be criminally responsible, then a very high bar would need to be cleared. It would need to be proven that a school representative (eg. teacher or administrator) deliberately put the kid in danger for some reason, knowing what the likely outcome would be. That standard seems extremely unlikey to be met.

abelenky
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10

Assuming consent is actually required1 and the forged signature is convincing enough: in absence of statute or case law to the contrary (that I can find) I suggest that the school has accepted loco parentis responsibility for the child by taking him on the trip.

Also assuming the injury was caused by the school's lack of proper safeguarding, negligence, recklessness etc the school would - depending on the particular circumstances - be responsible for the injury as the following government's Health and safety: responsibilities and duties for schools guidance would apply:

Teachers and other staff in schools have a common law duty when in charge of pupils to take the same care of them as they would as a parent.

Source

1NB consent is not always required. The government's Health and safety on educational visits guidance establishes that:

A school must always get written consent for nursery age children.

For children over nursery age, written consent is not needed for most trips, as they’re part of the curriculum. However, it’s good practice to tell parents about them.

Written consent is usually only needed for trips that:

  • need a higher level of risk assessment

  • are outside normal school hours

Source

9

The school has a duty of care towards its students

If they discharged that duty, they are not responsible (liable); if they didn’t, they are.

The duty is discharged by acting reasonably. Without knowing what the school did or did not do and how, if at all, that contributed to the injury, it’s impossible to guess if they met that standard.

This is the same as the negligence standard that applies to everybody. The only difference with a school is that the duty always exists towards students and the duty is non-delegable, that is, even if control is passed to someone else (e.g. the bus or venue operator) the school still holds the duty (as well as the delegate).

Dale M
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