PORTLAND, Ore. — A student's family at Franklin High School is suing Portland Public Schools (PPS), as well as a school nurse and woodshop teacher, for $4.7 million after an incident which led to a partial amputation of the student's finger.
During a woodshop class on June 2, 2022, the student was instructed to cut a small piece of wood, using heavy machinery. The lawsuit claims that the student mangled their index finger in the blade of the machinery due to "brief introduction and instruction" by the woodshop teacher about how to use the machine.
The student went to the nurse's office at Franklin High School where the school nurse told them to go to urgent care. After arriving at urgent care, the student and their mother were told that urgent care did not have the resources to treat the student's wound and that they should go to emergency care.
The lawsuit claims that if the school nurse had instructed the student and their mother to go to the nearest emergency department immediately, rather than urgent care, it could have potentially saved the student's finger from partial amputation.
Michael Jacobs, the attorney representing the family, wrote in the lawsuit that PPS and the school nurse "negligently or recklessly failed to meet their duties of providing a reasonably safe physical environment for their students."
The lawsuit states that the family is also suing due to emotional damage caused after the incident.
According to the lawsuit, the student "is now the subject of regular harassment, ridicule, insensitive jokes and insults related to his injuries and disfigurement."
The lawsuit claims that the woodshop teacher has directly contributed to this ridicule, using the student as a "cautionary tale" during lectures in class. Jacobs writes that "this harassment, ridicule, insensitivity, and insulting behavior, has been encouraged, normalized, and exacerbated" by the woodshop teacher's instructions.
The lawsuit was originally filed on May 30.
PPS declined to comment on the lawsuit.
