A daycare left an infant child free to puff on a vape pen filled with THC, parents allege in a federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia.
The Malvern School, headquartered in Delaware County, is also accused of lying in subsequent investigations after a 6-month-old grabbed a vape pen a teacher dropped at a preschool in Voorhees Township, N.J., according to the lawsuit.
The Nov. 3 lawsuit makes 11 claims, including negligent infliction of emotional distress on parents Sean and Stephanie Burns. Though their child was forced to seek medical attention, it does not appear that she was physically harmed by the THC.
“As a result of the… incident, resulting from the gross negligence, recklessness, carelessness and borderline criminal conduct of Defendants… S.R.B. was subject to AIDS, Hepatitis B and drug testing, and there is no way of knowing the long-term effects S.R.B. may suffer from in the future,” the suit says.
S.R.B. was in the infant room on July 30 when a teacher dropped her vape pen, according to the lawsuit. The school told the Burnses S.R.B. had placed the pen in her mouth a few times over a five-minute span before anyone realized what was happening.
The parents took S.R.B. for a blood test and asked to view the video footage from the infant room. They had been told the teacher was fired but weren’t given her name, the suit says.
Malvern, rather than supplying the footage, described it as three minutes of S.R.B. crawling with the THC vape in her mouth. Authorities called in to investigate said otherwise, the suit says, summarizing that “it looked bad.”
It wasn’t until Aug. 7 that the Burnses finally viewed the footage. They said it was “clearly edited and/or cut down,” in that it didn’t show how the vape got on the floor or how long it was there before S.R.B. picked it up.
It was clear that S.R.B. had the business end of the vape in her mouth, the suit says, despite earlier being told that couldn’t be discerned from the video, the suit says.
“(T)he THC was in her mouth for at least two full minutes,” the suit says. “The footage also clearly shows that there were three teachers within 10-12 feet of S.R.B. throughout the video, all of which had a clear and unobstructed view of S.R.B.
“Rather than paying attention to S.R.B. and the other infants in their care, Defendants’ employees were gossiping about clothes and someone’s husband.”
An incident report was full of errors, the suit says. It makes claims for negligence, breach of contract and violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
Patrick Brennan of Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry in West Chester represents the plaintiffs.
