My kids were fooling around on the playground equipment at an abandoned school and one fell, hitting other equipment on the way down to the ground. Does the town have any liability even though the school has long closed?

The property that the abandoned school is on is owned by someone – most likely, your town. The first thing you will want to explore is finding out, through property tax records, exactly who owns the property. Second, was the old playground equipment inaccessible to the average child – in other words, did your children have to climb fences or get through locked gates to access the equipment? If the equipment was just left out so that children could play on it, the owner of the property should have assumed that children WOULD play on it. The owner would, therefore, be liable for any injuries caused by the equipment. If, however, the owner took precautions to make it very difficult for your children to get to the playground equipment, the owner’s liability may be limited. However, if the precautions taken were easily circumvented, liability will again increase.

Case valuation is impossible without knowing the exact circumstances of any given case as well as where the case will be brought. An experienced attorney in your locality can give you an idea of what your case will be worth, based on the extent and severity of the injuries, whether there is extensive scarring or lifelong disability, and what precautions, if any, were taken by the owner to keep children away from the equipment.