Always Identify Everyone on a Trip

Always Identify Everyone on a Trip

Not their names, but their position to you so you know how they are going to sue you.

We do not look at volunteers as potential litigants. They are there to help because they want to. Yet they sue. If they are an employee pay them, if they are a client have them pay, and if they are neither always have them sign a release.

This happens a dozen times a year. You have someone on your trip who is not really an employee, maybe be a volunteer, a chaperone, or a friend of an employee. If they are not being paid, they must sign a release, even if you do not pay them.

In this case, a schoolteacher was a volunteer chaperone on a ski trip. The ski trip was being run by the school district. The plaintiff/volunteer fell and injured her shoulder. She then filed a worker’s compensation claim and won because she was acting in the capacity of a teacher at the time of her injury.

The amount of the award was not reported. However, her medical bills will be paid, and she will receive 60% of her pay while she was off work because of the injury.

For other blog posts on similar topics see: You’ve got to be kidding: Chaperone liable for the death of a girl on a trip

To see this article go to City found liable for ski injury Peabody High teacher fell while supervising a school trip in 2004.