Bullying and the Liability as a Parent | Preszler Law Toronto Injury Lawyer

In this informative segment, John Philp from Preszler Injury Lawyers discusses the legal implications of bullying, particularly in the context of children. He emphasizes that parents can be held financially responsible if their child bullies another, highlighting the importance of being proactive in addressing such behavior. Philp explains that a lawsuit related to bullying requires evidence of tangible consequences, such as physical injury or psychological trauma. He also touches on the responsibilities of parents regarding cyberbullying and the necessity of monitoring their children's online activities. Lastly, he notes recent changes in home insurance policies that may leave parents vulnerable to lawsuits arising from bullying incidents. For more information, contact Preszler Injury Lawyers at 1-800-JUSTICE.

Thank you, Lim. John Philp is back for another visit from Preszler Injury Lawyers. Good morning!

Good morning! School's heading back, and we want to talk about bullying. It's something you might not really think of in terms of legalities, but if your child bullies and injures someone, you could be on the hook financially for that.

Listen, gone are the days of "boys will be boys" and "it's just a playground tussle." People are pursuing legal rights because their children are being bullied at school or even online. As a parent, you need to be very mindful of what your children are doing, especially if you're aware that your children may be bullying other children at school.

If your child is bullied or if they are being physically attacked, do they have to suffer a physical injury? Well, at the end of the day, if you're going to consider bringing a lawsuit because your child has been bullied, there needs to be some sort of tangible consequence to the child. This means there has to be some sort of physical injury or maybe some sort of psychological trauma that they've suffered because of the bullying. You can't just bring a lawsuit simply because your child has been bullied.

There needs to be a consequence, but as a parent, you need to take active steps if you are the parent of the child that is doing the bullying in terms of legal responsibility. You have to make sure you take active steps to prevent that bullying if you're aware of it. For example, if you get a call from the school that your son or daughter has been involved in this situation, what do you do to prevent future incidents? Do you do anything, or do you sit on your hands and just let it continue? If you do that, you could be in big trouble as a parent if your child causes injury to one of these children.

Does this also apply to cyberbullying? It does. In this day and age, it's very difficult, I think, as a parent to always be on top of your kids in terms of what they're doing online. However, it would be irresponsible as a parent not to have some involvement. If your child is involved in cyberbullying, you need to be able to demonstrate at a later date, if you do get sued, that you took active steps as a reasonable parent to monitor their behavior online.

You should maybe even log your actions or write them down. That would actually be very good, and you could use that as evidence in court at a later date. Even just occasionally checking their Facebook activities or having parental controls on their computer is important. I do not recommend completely ignoring their activities online.

If this does go to court and you, as the parent of the child being bullied, are bringing the suit, is it against the parents, the school, or both? You would bring the suit against the minor that is doing the bullying. You would also bring the suit against the parents of that minor. If it's at school, very likely, you're going to bring the school board in, potentially the teachers who had a responsibility to supervise those children when the bullying was ongoing.

As parents, it used to be that you could potentially look to your home insurance. If you got sued, your home insurance typically would cover you for some sort of lawsuit because of unintentional injury to another party. Unfortunately, there's been a recent court of appeal decision that basically said, depending on what your home insurance policy indicates—because every home insurance policy is different—that parents don't have the ability to turn to their home insurance for protection against a lawsuit in these circumstances. You could potentially be on the hook, and it could have very serious consequences for your family.

Wow, John Philp from Preszler Injury Lawyers, thank you so much! And on a lighter note, have a good one. Let's take a look at traffic. Here's Kim.