Downside of Doing Nothing

This is a pretty bad one - I have not seen this before (I have a son who is potty training now, so I hope our daycare doesn't send something similar home to us).

But, the lesson here is that you can't just do nothing altogether. The school sent an e-mail a couple days later and then did nothing else. When parents, or anyone for that matter, don't get any responses to inquires, at some point they all start to think of the media as the next place to turn. I know that lawyers have a tenancy to tell clients to do nothing and say nothing (in the hopes problems will go away), but this is sometimes the effect of that strategy. An incident that may have been handled on a personal level with reprimanding the teacher now is a national news story.

H/T Scott M. - who I am just going to start calling my researcher.

Comments

[Marva B. Cannion]

It would be interesting to investigate the legal ramifications of the teacher's conduct; it would not be difficult to prove as her note indicates she found it. There are probably hearlt hazards involved as well. Does this fall under negligence or a failure to properly care for students?

[Justin B.]

Yeah, well, this is going to be outside of her official job duties, so this teacher would be in significant trouble because none of the state governmental immunity laws would save her. Outside of those, all the tort laws would come into play and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress seems possible. So, #1 she should probably lose her job under various issues, #2 she is probably civilly liable to the student and parent, #3 she may be civilly liable to the school for any damage they incur and #4 she may well be criminally liable under some criminal provisions on non-fatal crimes against a person or crimes against the public order. I am not sure on those as I am not a criminal law expert, but it does seem like the State may not want people exchanging feces on a regular basis.

Either way, this person probably shouldn't be teaching anymore.