The school should be considered liable from the standpoint of not having the school grounds locked down during periods of time when the school is closed or they should have someone patrolling the grounds. The school is also responsible for checking the workmanship of the playground equipment and seeing if it is safe for children to play on or with. The fact that the rim of the basketball goal is several feet high doesn't negate the fact that children will find a way to get up there and the equipment should have been checked by the school to see if it was safe. The company that installed the playground equipment should also be liable because they obviously did not check the equipment to see if it was safe. When Bobby arrived at the hospital, he should have been immediately taken care of, regardless of whether or not he had insurance or not. The nurse did not know whether he had insurance and I realize that she could not do any type of invasive care without consent of the parent, but she should have at least put him in a bed and monitored him instead of expecting an young boy who was probably in shock from blood loss, let alone the actual accident be responsible for taking care of himself. I am quite sure that there were more than one nurse on duty and one could have monitored Bobby while the other nurse or other staff located his mother. The fact that they waited...
Once he was sent to surgery, the surgeon was responsible to make sure that the correct hand was removed and there was no excuse for this error. At the very least the correct hand should have been marked in some way.
This case would fall under the jurisdiction of joint and several liability which is used in civil cases where two or more people are found liable for damage. As was mentioned above, there are several people who could be held liable for the damage done to Bobby. In this type of liability, the plaintiff could collect the entire judgment from any one of the parties or from all of the parties in various amounts until the judgment is paid in full. However, some states do not recognize this type of liability and it would depend on the state this occurred in whether it would be this type of liability or not.
References
The history of EMTALA. (2000). Retrieved from http://emtala.com/history.htm August 7, 2011.
Comparative negligence. Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/comparative-negligence
August 7, 2011.
Joint and several liability. (n.d.). West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Retrieved August 07, 2011,
from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/joint-and-several-liability .
