The Taiwan High Court’s Taichung Branch on Thursday ordered the state to pay NT$1.8 million (US$59,900) in compensation to a 12-year-old student for an eye injury caused by a teacher in the classroom.
The incident took place in April 2009 when the teacher, surnamed Hung (洪), at Chung Cheng Elementary School in Changhua County threw a blackboard eraser at her students because she was angry at them for being noisy. The eraser hit a female student in the left eye, causing damage to her cornea, as well as vitreous hemorrhage and macular damage.
The court ruling said the injury caused the girl’s vision in the affected eye to drop below 0.01 — from a normal ratio of 1.0 — and has since shown no signs of recovering.
The girl’s family filed a suit against Hung with the Changhua District Court, accusing the teacher of causing bodily harm and asked for state compensation and damages totaling NT$3 million.
During the first trial, Hung asked that the case be settled out of court and offered NT$600,000. The girl’s family accepted the offer and dropped the charges against Hung.
However, the Changhua District Court ruled that the damage to the girl’s eye caused tremendous physical and mental pain and since the school did not fulfill its duty of protecting students, it should give the girl NT$1.1 million in state compensation, as the injury had caused near-complete blindness in the girl’s left eye, reducing her ability to see by about 30 percent.
Both the school and the girl’s parents appealed the ruling to the High Court.
The High Court raised the state compensation figure by NT$700,000, saying the injury would have decreased the girl’s work efficiency by 46 percent.
Total compensation after the second trial — including the NT$600,000 Hung paid out of court — amounted to NT$2.4 million.
The girl’s grandmother said it was unfair to receive such little payment for being nearly blinded in one eye, adding that no matter how much compensation was given, it could not make up for what was lost.
Translated by Jake Chung, staff writer
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