John is a special-needs student in elementary school who was a victim of an illegal restraint from a teacher who was entrusted with his care when his primary teacher was away. The teacher began to restrain John without any training, holding him face-down on the floor. When John began to calm down, he was moved to the couch face-down where the teacher continued to restrain him by placing a beanbag over his back, applying her body weight onto the child. This traumatic experience not only caused emotional trauma for the child but also induced petechiae, a disorder in which blood vessels break under the skin, onto John’s face. Shortly after the incident, Chris Keane of The Keane Law Firm was contacted by John’s parents for guidance on how to approach this incident and hold the teacher and school district responsible.

Depicting Anatomy of Injury From Illegal Restraint of Child

To illustrate the incident to the Defense, Chris worked with DK Global to create an animation that recreated the disturbing incident and explains how John’s injury occurred. The animation commences with a comparison of the height and weight of John and the teacher, showing an 86-pound difference between the two. The visual continues to show the incident occur and how John tells the teacher that he could not breathe with her laying on top of him. Abusively, the teacher tells him that if he couldn't breathe, he couldn't talk, and then despite that continues to apply pressure to John’s back compressing his diaphragm, chest cavity, and heart. The presentation then depicts the compression causing limited blood flow and pressure in John’s venous system, ending in the rupturing of small venous branches and hemorrhaging, causing petechiae of John's face. Chris Keane relentlessly advocated for his client resolving the case after lengthy mediation that resulted in an extremely significant outcome for John and his family.

Chris Keane has been advocating for child abuse victims for over 30 years and is consistently rated as one of the 500 Leading Plaintiff’s Lawyers in America by Lawdragon Magazine. Chris has been awarded California's “Street Fighter of the Year” award in 2017 by the CAOC after a precedent-setting Supreme Court victory resulted in the protection of all victims of suspected abuse in California. A member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), Chris has recovered more than $60,000,000 for his clients. Outside of law, Christopher has served as the President of the San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center and coaches numerous youth sports teams, and has a child abuse prevention technology company, iReport Child Abuse, LLC.