In Dickens v. Irvington Board of Education, an Essex County jury awarded $8 million on Sept. 18 in the case of a middle school student whose left arm was seriously injured when she tripped during gym class. But the jury’s apportionment of 25 percent comparative liability to the plaintiff brought her recovery to $6 million.
Destinee Dickens, who was then an eighth grade student at Union Avenue Middle School in Irvington, was injured on Oct. 4, 2011, when her gym class was being led along a paved pathway behind the school to an athletic field. A wire cable ran across the pathway, suspended between posts on either side, purportedly to prevent vehicles from going onto the athletic fields, said Dickens’ attorney, Gregg Alan Stone. Some students walked around the wire barrier, and others jumped over it, Stone said. The wire was about 18 inches off the ground at its lowest point, and Destinee tried to jump over it, but her right shoe got caught, Stone said.
