FARMINGTON – An 8-year-old Industry girl will undergo a fourth surgery today on her left ring finger – exactly one year after losing part of it in an accident.
Michaela Hutchinson’s mother, Jennie Hutchinson, said the tip of her daughter’s left ring finger was severed nearly to the first knuckle by a broken door hinge at W.G. Mallett School in Farmington on Sept. 16, 2004. At about 8:45 a.m. that day, Michaela had gone to the bathroom, where a hydraulic hinge that’s designed to automatically close a heavy door was broken off and “sharp as a razor.” When the allegedly faulty door closed, Michaela’s finger was cut off by the hinge’s sharp broken edge.
Michaela’s parents have filed a lawsuit against SAD 9 and Melvin Burnham, the school’s principal at the time of the incident. They are scheduled to appear in Franklin County Superior Court on Sept. 23 to ask that the district allow its attorney to interview school staff and inspect the hinge and door closer.
Immediately after the accident, the then-second-grader’s teacher took the girl to the front office to get her help but, her mother said, her care was delayed at least 20 minutes by Burnham’s slow response. The tip of the finger, which was cleanly severed, was not found until later that day and could not be saved.
“We’ll never know if they could have saved her finger,” Jennie Hutchinson said Thursday.
In the lawsuit, Farmington attorney Gerald K. Williams claims that district personnel were aware of the defective automatic bathroom-door hinge prior to the incident and that another student, Joshua Harvell, had also suffered the near-amputation of a finger from a similarly defective door at the school on Sept. 9, 1999. It is unclear if Harvell’s incident involved the same door or a different one with the same problem. The hinge involved in Michaela’s incident has since been replaced, her mother said.
“I just want the school to be safe for the children,” she said.
Neither Superintendent Michael Cormier nor the school district’s attorney, Michael Saucier of a Portland law firm, would comment on the case Thursday.
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