How to Prevent a Personal Injury Lawsuit With Your Backyard Swimming Pool
Did you recently put a swimming pool in your backyard and are worried about the potential legal consequences that can come from it with a personal injury lawsuit? If so, it will help to ask these questions to know if your bases are covered.
Is the Pool Locked Up in Some Way?
The first thing you should ask yourself is if you are taking steps to lock up your pool in some way. If you have a pool in your backyard, but anybody is free to walk up to it without any barriers, you have what is considered an attractive nuisance. Even though it is considered trespassing to go into your backyard, the pool could potentially attract younger children who do not know about safety and can be hurt as a result. It may not seem fair, but that is how the law views a situation where a pool is located in an open area.
Many homeowners either place the swimming pool in a fenced-off backyard where the main gate can be locked or place fencing just around the pool with a locking gate. By making sure that others cannot access the pool with minimal effort, you'll do your part to prevent injuries.
Are There Plenty of Warning Signs?
You may not have a pool as big as the local city pool, but you need to have warning signs to let people know about the dangers of your pool. It is always a good idea to have no diving signs to warn people about a shallow pool and to place signs that identify how deep your pool is. There is always a risk of someone getting hurt because they dive into a shallow part of a pool or simply do not know how deep the swimming pool goes. Signs can help protect you from someone who is injured and claims that they did not know any better due to a lack of warnings.
Is the Pool Maintained?
As the owner of a swimming pool, it is your responsibility to maintain your swimming pool to ensure it is safe. This includes making sure that the diving board is safe to use, that the ladders are not broken, and that you have safety equipment that works. If someone gets hurt while using your pool due to your neglect of the structure, it could result in a lawsuit.
Contact a local personal injury lawyer if you're being sued for an accident that happened in your backyard swimming pool.