In November 2025, the family’s two-year-old son was enrolled at a licensed child-care center in Kountze, in Hardin County. He was dropped off in the morning like any other day, in the care of staff his family trusted to keep him safe.
Early that morning, another child struck the boy on the collarbone with a plastic toy. According to the petition, the center responded by leaving the child’s mother a single voicemail and made no other attempt to reach her or any other guardian. The staff did not seek medical care for the child, and he was left to get through the day with an injury that, as it turned out, was a fractured collarbone.
When someone arrived to pick the boy up that afternoon, it was immediately obvious that he could not lift or move his right arm. His family took him to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with a broken collarbone and placed in a sling. The petition alleges he was in pain the entire day. It further alleges that the center’s staff either failed to notice he couldn’t move his arm because they weren’t paying attention, or noticed and disregarded it.
The center is a licensed Texas child-care center serving infants, toddlers, and young children. Texas child-care rules require centers to supervise children at all times, keep adequate staffing, respond appropriately when a child is hurt, and notify parents. Those are the protections meant for exactly this situation. The petition alleges the center failed to keep proper watch over the children, failed to seek immediate medical attention for an obviously injured child, and failed to actually inform the parent of how serious the injury was.
A broken bone in a two-year-old is not subtle. A child who cannot lift his arm is showing it. We are pursuing the center’s staffing and supervision records, its incident-response and parent-notification policies, and the available footage and records, to establish how a fracture went unaddressed for an entire day and why a single voicemail was treated as enough.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center’s operator in Hardin County. We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence, including the failure to supervise, the failure to seek immediate medical attention for an obvious injury, and the failure to properly notify the parent. We are seeking the records and footage that show what the center knew, when it knew it, and why a hurt child was left without care.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, let him break a bone, leave one voicemail, and send him through the day in pain. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
We represent the family and have filed suit against the center’s operator in Hardin County. We brought claims for negligence and gross negligence, including the failure to supervise, the failure to seek immediate medical attention for an obvious injury, and the failure to properly notify the parent. We are seeking the records and footage that show what the center knew, when it knew it, and why a hurt child was left without care.
A daycare does not get to take a family’s money to keep their child safe, let him break a bone, leave one voicemail, and send him through the day in pain. We intend to hold this center fully accountable.
