Children do fall, and most of the time nothing happens, because playgrounds are supposed to be built so that a fall is survivable. When a child suffers a skull fracture or a broken arm, the question is almost never whether they fell. It is what they fell onto, from how high, and who was watching.
Updated September 2026
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Playground safety is not guesswork. There are long-established national standards governing how much impact-absorbing surfacing is required under equipment of a given height, how far that surfacing has to extend, how large openings may be so a head or limb cannot be entrapped, and how equipment must be inspected and maintained.
Almost every serious playground injury involves a departure from one of those standards, an absence of supervision, or both. That is why these cases are provable rather than simply unfortunate.
The leading cause of severe playground injury. Impact-attenuating surfacing — engineered wood fiber, rubber, or poured surface — has to be the right material, at the right depth for the equipment height, extending the full required distance. Compacted, displaced, or worn-through surfacing under a slide exit or swing is a documented and correctable hazard.
Standards distinguish equipment for toddlers from equipment for school-age children, and fall height is the reason. A two-year-old on structures designed for eight-year-olds is a foreseeable injury, and at a licensed facility it is also usually a supervision failure.
Staff-to-child ratios exist because young children cannot assess risk. Most serious playground cases at a childcare facility involve a period during which nobody was watching, and staffing records, sign-in sheets, and schedules establish it.
Protruding bolts, cracked plastic, missing guardrails, worn swing hangers, and openings that can trap a head, limb, or drawstring. These are inspection items. Where a facility keeps maintenance logs, they are evidence; where it keeps none, that absence is evidence too.
A Missouri daycare permitted an activity it should never have allowed. A child suffered a skull fracture and a traumatic brain injury.
Then the facility failed to call for help. That second failure is often as consequential as the first, both for the child's outcome and for the case, because it demonstrates that the problem was not a single unlucky moment but how the place was run.
The claim settled for $850,000.
Past results do not guarantee a future outcome, and every case depends on its own facts. These are public-record results that show what trial-prepared representation can produce.
A daycare allowed a dangerous activity that caused a child's skull fracture and traumatic brain injury, then failed to call for help. Read full story →
A family's child was injured because of daycare negligence in St. Louis. Resolved for $600,000. Read full story →
A national grocery retailer offered $125,000 for an unguarded pallet that fractured our client's femur. A previous firm had declined the case. Read full story →
The depth and condition of the material under the equipment, the height the child fell from, and any broken or protruding part. Surfacing gets raked and replenished and equipment gets repaired within days of an injury, which quietly destroys the best evidence in the case.
Head injuries in children are easy to miss, particularly when a child seems fine an hour later. Do not rely on a facility's assessment that no care was needed.
Request it in writing. Ask specifically how many staff were present, how many children they were responsible for, and who witnessed the fall. Those answers are checkable against staffing records later.
It prompts an independent inspection and generates records about surfacing, equipment, and staffing that are otherwise difficult to obtain, and it protects the other children there.
No. Responsibility depends on negligence: inadequate supervision for the children's ages, equipment that was broken or inappropriate for the age group, insufficient impact-absorbing surfacing, or a failure to respond properly to the injury. Children do get hurt without anyone being at fault. Serious injuries, though, frequently trace back to one of those failures.
National consensus standards address fall surfacing type and depth relative to equipment height, the extent of the surfacing zone, opening sizes that prevent head and limb entrapment, guardrail requirements, and inspection practice. They are generally not statutes, but they are widely adopted, they define what a reasonably careful operator does, and departures from them are persuasive evidence of negligence.
It is usually less protective than the facility suggests. Missouri courts scrutinize waivers closely, particularly those a parent signs on a child's behalf, and they generally do not excuse a facility's own negligence. Being handed a form at enrollment is not the same as having given up a child's claim.
The framework is similar but the defendant differs. A landlord or property manager that provides and controls a playground has a duty to maintain it in reasonably safe condition, which includes surfacing and equipment condition. There is generally no supervision duty, so those cases center on the physical hazard.
Yes, enough to get an evaluation. Children compensate well and describe symptoms poorly, and a normal appearance in the hours after a fall does not rule out a significant head injury. Because a young brain is still developing, some consequences do not become apparent for months or years, which makes prompt documentation important.
Timelines for a minor's claim differ from an adult's, and any recovery is subject to court oversight regarding how it is structured and preserved for the child. Because future consequences may not be known for years, the timing of a settlement is itself an important decision rather than a formality.
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The surfacing gets raked and the equipment gets fixed within days. Free case review. An attorney personally reviews every case. English- and Spanish-speaking staff available.