What started out as a silly student prank on a dare, will end up costlng him and his parents around $50,000.
In 2012, the then 14-year-old student in the west coast province of British Columbia had taken a small padlock from a classmate’s locker and was jumping up to try to hook it onto an overhead ceiling sprinkler head
The student at Wellington High School in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, ended up breaking the small and fragile glass capsule, normally activated by heat from a fire, and set the sprinkler off. This activated all the sprinklers in the school causing substantial water damage.
Although the boy admitted the action, in a civil trial the school district said his intentional act caused the damage. His parents argued it was not intentional, that the boy did not know how a sprinkler was activated and did not know it was fragile.
The case came under the School Act which holds that a student and a student’s parents can be held liable for damage to school property through negligence or an intentional action.
Although the incident happened two years ago, it made it’s way to the B.C. Supreme Court where the judge ruled against the family suggested that at age 14, the school shouldn’t need to keep students under constant supervision and the boy should have realized that his actions might have broken the sprinkler
Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick ruled, “It is clear that (the boy) did not turn his mind to anything in particular beyond playing a prank on his friend” she wrote.
“He certainly did not turn his mind to the risk involved in interfering with the sprinkler head. The question is whether, viewed objectively, he should have. The answer to that question here is conclusively yes … he should reasonably have foreseen in a general way that his interference with the sprinkler head could somehow cause it to ‘go off’ with the obvious consequences, even known to him, that water would spray. I find that (the boy) did not meet the standard of care expected from a child of like age, intelligence and experience and that he was negligent in the circumstances.”
The judge said the boy might have thought the only consequences would be for the school janitor and the classmate who owned the padlock, but “obviously, more dire consequences followed.”
She ruled Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District should be awarded damages of $48,630.67 plus interest and legal costs.
How fire sprinklers work
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