Posted on 08/31/2010 1:19:44 PM PDT by billorites
DOVER, N.H. -- The family of the Dover High School student shocked in his electrical trades class last school year has filed a lawsuit alleging negligence on the parts of the teacher, school district and City of Dover.
Documents filed in Strafford County Superior Court on Friday indicate Robert and Sandra DuBois, parents of 18-year-old Kyle DuBois, are seeking compensation for medical expenses, lost income due to time away from work and other damages related to their son being shocked in his electrical trades class on March 11. The lawsuit claims DuBois critically injured himself because of his teacher Thomas Kelley’s failure to properly warn of the dangers of electrical currents.
DuBois was hospitalized after receiving a serious electrical shock while in class on March 11. On a dare, DuBois clipped alligator clips to his nipples and received a severe shock that caused him to stagger and collapse, the lawsuit says.
The incident resulted in DuBois being sent to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, where he was diagnosed as having an "out of hospital electrocution resulting in cardiac arrest, unresponsive state and respiratory failure," according to the lawsuit.
He was later taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where doctors drilled a hole through his skull to permit the insertion of a probe to monitor internal pressure, the lawsuit says. He was released from the hospital March 16.
Kelley was allegedly aware of the dare and less than eight feet away when DuBois was shocked, the lawsuit says. Authorities said Kelley immediately performed CPR and, according to the lawsuit, responding emergency personnel found DuBois’ heart had stopped.
Court documents say DuBois suffered brain damage due to the heart stoppage. He has short-term memory loss and "other losses and disruptions" as a result, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims Kelley was negligent in that during more than one class session, he conducted experiments that belied the dangers of electrical currents. He had students hold hands in a semicircle, with students at either end of the chain holding an end of an electrical cord plugged into an ordinary household outlet, causing the current to flow through the students. The lawsuit alleges this "reckless" act on the teacher’s part led DuBois to believe the transmission of an electrical current through a person by this activity caused only a tingling sensation.
Kelley also told the students the classroom was fitted with protected circuits at the workstations to prevent harmful or fatal shocks, the lawsuit says.
On the day of the shock incident, DuBois had finished his book work and moved on to various projects in the back of the classroom. Students began playing with the electrical cord and shocking themselves, according to the lawsuit.
Kelley not only knew what the students were doing, but according to the lawsuit, may have played a part in the dare that resulted in DuBois’ injuries. The lawsuit claims "One student heard Mr. Kelley state that Kyle should try it with his nipples and that he, Mr. Kelley, would give him a Mountain Dew if he did so."
Multiple students told police Kelley was involved in the dare. However, DuBois defended his teacher in recorded interviews with police. He said it was a fellow student who dared him and offered him a soda.
Kelley’s version of events was slightly different. He claimed DuBois asked him for a Mountain Dew, but replied he did not have any.
Police interviews with both DuBois and Kelley were released to media outlets during a period of intense scrutiny around the case.
Kelley, a certified teacher and master electrician, later resigned as a result of the incident. Police filed no criminal charges after a thorough investigation.
The lawsuit alleges Kelley breached his duties as a teacher by failing to understand the hazard the electrical cord posed, failing to provide adequate care and supervision to his students, failing to adequately warn them of the dangers posed by electricity and negligently misrepresenting the capacity of the circuits, outlets and electrical cords used in the class.
As Kelley’s employer, the school district is named as liable for Kelley’s alleged negligence. The school district is also cited on allegations it was negligent in failing to exercise due care in hiring, training and supervising the teacher, and negligent in failing to provide a safe classroom environment for its students.
Finally, the lawsuit lists the City of Dover as a defendant in this case due to its ownership over Dover High School. The lawsuit alleges negligence on the city’s part for failing to provide a safe environment for those occupying the building.
Dover School District Superintendent Jean Briggs Badger declined to respond to the allegations levied against the district on Monday. She was not in charge of the district when the incident occurred and referred all questions to the district’s attorney, Corey Belobrow.
Belobrow has a policy against speaking about pending cases and declined to comment.
The DuBois family’s attorney, R. David DePuy, was unavailable for comment Monday. The family did not return a call seeking comment.
Court records indicate a return date on this case of Nov. 2.
Seems to me the experiment was successful - he should get an A.
The teacher should be give an award for allowing his student to reach this level of competence.
Got the zot! LOL!
(BTW, also posted here, lots of good comments http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2580867/posts )
I’m so glad I wasn’t drinking anything when I read that, Ivan.
Just about any do-it-yourself home electrical wiring book will tell you that the GFCI can’t do squat about the situation of simultaneously contacting hot and neutral while remaining isolated from a ground. Such a book will also advise of the importance of not allowing shock current, if it does flow, to pass near the heart. (So that if necessary to wire in a live panel, it is important to have insulating shoes or stand on an insulating pad not in water, and keep one hand behind one’s back.) If Kelley’s teaching didn’t even rise to the level of caution advised in a Home Depot manual, well he deserves some “static.”
Some folks are destined for Darwin awards it seems, and others work on multi-thousand volt equipment for decades and live to tell the tales to their great-grandchildren.
“The ignorance of H.S. kids nowadays is shocking.
Can’t fix stupid.”
Stupid for doing what they see on the internet and TV and then wondering why they got hurt. Or maybe they aren’t stupid but pulling this on purpose just to file a lawsuit. Of course the stupid part comes in when he realizes he didn’t calculate for the brain damage.
My high school radio shop had metal bench tops. At one time or another, most of us learned the reason for the “one hand in the pocket” rule.
Oh don’t worry, most keyboards have a maximum of 5 volts inside.
I had a science teacher who used to shock us for fun. One day the whole class held hands in a circle while he cranked this device he had built and we all got shocked. He said Benjamin Franklin used to do this at parties.
Even this would boil down to, what could the teacher be reasonably expected to do. So what if the teacher was close, if his back was also turned and nobody was giggling and pointing or otherwise drawing attention to the soon to be almost Darwin award student. If the class requires a squad of private eyes to keep it safe from this kind of lawsuit, then litigation has gone way out of whack.
On the one hand, if the student was dumb enough to try this stunt in class, he was probably dumb enough to try it anywhere and the mere presence of the teacher, somewhere in the vicinity, is not, to me, proof of anyone’s negligence other than the student.
On the other hand, if the teacher had any role in knowing about (ahead of time) and/or observing the prank, THEN whatever was UNSAFE about how the prank was being done WAS KNOWN AND/OR OBSERVABLE by the teacher, who should have known better and who had the authority to stop it, or alter how the prank was being done.
While I’d like to blame the dumb student, I too would hold the teacher as having SOME portion of negligence/fault, if he did knowingly act, or knowingly fail to act to prevent what was unsafe about the prank - because, as he teacher HE HAS such responsibility WHEN HE KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON. Yes, a teacher does have such responsibility, to stop stupid students from doing things, when (and if) he has direct knowledge that that is what they are doing.
Van de Graafs or Wimshurst machines (the kind of static electricity generator stuff Ben Franklin would play around with) are harmless because their maximum current output is too small to disrupt vital functions in most persons.
Alessandro Volta with his voltaic piles was flirting with more danger, and I haven’t ever heard of a Volta party. A couple of Walgreens economy packs of 9 volt batteries (they are easy to click together in series) would do the trick for a sufficiently stupid crowd.
This sounds like something Michele Obama would do.
That concept died the day a woman was awarded millions after suing McDonald's for being burned by coffee she spilled in her lap in her car.
Reminds me of the guy who checked if the 9 volt battery was good by licking it with his tongue...
Heh heh heh, one fellow I know swears by this method of checking the strength of these batteries even when a multimeter is near at hand.
While the true facts of the story don’t make the suit look so bad (the McDonalds in question had been chronically disobeying the local food inspector’s official warnings to dial down the temperature in its coffee machine, and the resulting difference in temperature made a big difference in the extent of the injury outcome), perhaps the meme as shared in the popular press made the bum/welfare crowd a little more bold.
“Oh, I don’t know, it seems like he should have a little bit of liability for not recognizing the possibility that he’d get a student stupid enough to ignore the lecture on resistances in series and hook up a near short through his heart.”
That does sound like a pretty stupid thing to have done, even if not dangerous in and of itself, for just this reason. I mean, did he actually expect all of these kids he was teaching to understand a concept like that? Asking too much, I think.
sounds like he should have taken wood working instead of electricity
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