Boca Raton Swimming Pool Injury Lawyer
Mostly because of its year-round mild weather, Florida is ground zero for swimming pool drownings. Chemical burns and chemical poisonings are common as well. Pool owners must use chlorine and other highly toxic chemicals to clean their pools. Too much chlorine, and swimmers often sustain chemical burns to their ears, noses, and throats. Not enough chlorine, and dangerous bacteria grows and multiplies, especially in warm weather.
The chemical level must be “just right” to avoid serious injuries and children, even if they’re experienced swimmers, require constant attention. If a breakdown happens, the thorough Boca Raton swimming pool injury lawyers at Smith, Ball & Báez work very hard to make things right. True, we cannot turn back the clock and change what happened to your friend or loved one. No one can do that. But we do the next best thing, which is obtain the compensation these victims need and deserve to move on with their lives.
The Duty of Care and Boca Raton Swimming Pool Injury Lawyers
Swimming pools require lots of proper maintenance, and they also involve a significant legal responsibility. The legal responsibility is called the duty of care.
Most swimming pool injury victims are children. Most pool owners have a duty of reasonable care in these situations, even if the child wasn’t an invited guest or paying customer.
Invited guests and paying customers are invitees in Florida. Since the relationship between victim and owner is so close, the owner has a duty of reasonable care in these situations. This duty includes a responsibility to ensure that the pool is safe, as well as a responsibility to frequently inspect the pool.
Frequently, the Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act establishes the standard of care. This law requires safety measures like:
- Unclimbable fence or other barrier that surrounds the pool,
- Life-saving equipment located near the water,
- Self-latching gate that operates from the pool side, and
- Alarms on any doors or windows that open to the pool.
If an owner violates this law, or a similar local safety ordinance, and that violation substantially causes injury, a Boca Raton swimming pool injury lawyer may be able to establish liability as a matter of law.
Many children sneak into commercial or residential pools. Normally, these victims are trespassers who aren’t entitled to any legal protection. But if the child was drawn to and injured at an attractive nuisance, like a swimming pool or construction site, the owner had a duty of reasonable care.
Knowledge of Hazard
Regardless of the victim’s legal status, compensation is available if the owner knew, or should have known, about the injury-causing hazard.
Direct evidence of actual knowledge usually includes “smoking guns” like maintenance and cleaning reports. Furthermore, residential pool owners who clean and/or use the pool almost every day also have actual knowledge of safety deficiencies.
Circumstantial evidence of constructive knowledge (should have known) is also admissible. If the hazard only existed for a short time, and in this context a “short time” is a few hours, the owner probably didn’t know about it, so no liability attaches.
Compensation in a swimming pool injury case usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering.
Rely on a Hard-Working Palm Beach County Lawyer
Injury victims are entitled to significant compensation. For a free consultation with an experienced spinal cord injury lawyer in Boca Raton, contact Smith, Ball, Baez & Prather, Florida Injury Lawyers. Attorneys can connect victims with doctors, even if they have no insurance or money.
