Lawsuits take school's swing sets away from kids

Everyone has favorite childhood memories. For many people, those memories include rolling down slides, dangling off of monkey bars and swinging on swing sets at their local neighborhood playground.

But elementary school students in Cabell County, West Virginia, may miss out on some of those childhood pleasures. That is because the county's school system has decided to remove swing sets from all school playgrounds, due to lawsuit fears.

The decision came after the school district faced two different lawsuits from the same parent over relatively minor injuries suffered by his two kids in separate incidents on a school playground. Facing a tight budget because of the current economic situation, the school system determined that it could not afford the potential costs of playground-related lawsuits and decided to remove the swing sets.

According to Cabell County Schools superintendent William Smith:

"We're disabling our swings to keep us out of the courtroom. Economically, school districts are really having to watch their budgets closely."

Smith recalls his own experience growing up in Cabell County and how much everyone enjoyed the playgrounds. Kids got the typical scrapes and bruises, but parents took care of those injuries without resorting to lawsuits.

Donna Mooney, the mother of a young girl who is a student at the school losing the swings, is disappointed that her daughter won't get to share in her own childhood experiences on the school's swing set.

"The tragedy is that the kids are losing everything that is fun about being a kid," she says. "You can't bubble wrap everything from them. They have to be allowed to play and be kids."

Comment:

Comrades, hardly a tragedy, but it is a shame for the kids. Our criminal justice system isn't the only thing that needs to be reformed, but our civil justice system as well. It's obvious that the parent in question is NOT trying to make the schools pay for their negligence, but rather is trying to make a fast and easy buck. Now all the kids are being made to suffer because of this person's greed.

This kind of frivolous lawsuits must stop. Indeed, people who even file such suits should be penalised for wasting taxpayer money. I shouldn't have to pay because a kid scraped his knee in a playground. Kids get scrapes, bruises, and sprained ankles. It's part of being a kid.

It's just too bad that some people see the civil justice system as a honey pot to be licked clean. But folks, that's OUR money that's being wasted on this nonsense. The people who file these suits are every bit as much a leech as the ones who are draining our social programs dry. It's time we think of the welfare of the kids, and not our personal bank account.