What Does The Law Say About Negligent Supervision On The Part of A Supervisor?

Some people love to supervise and to give orders. However, the job of offering supervision entails more than telling others what to do. It also demands the willingness to listen. Supervisors that fail to listen invite the chance that their irresponsible actions could cause them to be charged with negligent supervision.

In the eyes of the law, negligent supervision is viewed as a wrongful act.

Suppose an employee objects, when a supervisor seeks completion of a risky job. Why would the supervisor’s reluctance to listen to that comment be viewed as a wrongful act? Such behavior would be wrong, because a supervisor has a accepted the duty of caring for the workers under him or her.

If the same supervisor were charged with negligence, and then got called to appear in court, in order to answer that charge, the judge would certainly ask at least one question. What would that question be? It would be something like this: Could a problem have been foreseen, based on the statement made by the employee?

Other ways that a supervisor could demonstrate negligence

Ignoring acts of violence in the workplace. It includes ignoring a verbal or physical threat made by one worker, and directed towards a second worker. In addition, workers should feel comfortable reporting a threat. If there are any accidents, the injured workman has the right to contact a personal injury lawyer in Collingwood.

Failing to provide supervised employees with adequate training. This is wrong, because the untrained employee could do something that would be harmful to others, or even to the untrained worker. Allowing an employee to be alone with children, even though records show that the same employee has acted inappropriately towards children in the past.

Allowing an employee with a psychomotor problem to operate machinery; that would include any worker that was known to have consumed alcohol or to have smoked pot, before arriving at the worksite. The court would have reason to suspect that the supervisor’s oversight reflected his or her participation in the worker’s enjoyment of alcohol or pot.

Failing to monitor an employee that has been conducting scams. This could suggest that the supervisor had been a part of the scam. Failing to monitor employees that could make a serious mistake: All supervisors should realize that evidence of such a failing could surface after a mistake has been made. The victim of the mistake might consider charging the responsible party with negligent supervision.

Suppose, for example that some technician in an amniocentesis lab reports the wrong number of chromosomes in one of samples that had been sent to the laboratory. This could have been prevented, if the supervisor had established a system that guaranteed the monitoring of each technician that was counting chromosomes. The failure to establish such a system could be labelled as negligent supervision.