Swimming Pool Injuries - Comitz Law Firm

pool liability Whether it’s 12,500 feet deep or one inch deep, water poses an ever present danger.

Every year, drowning claims the lives of an estimated 320,000 people worldwide. In the United States, an average of 3,500 to 4,000 people drown per year. That’s an average of 10 fatal drownings per day.

The highest risk locations for drowning vary by age. Among infants under one year old, two-thirds of all drownings occur in bathtubs. Among children ages 1–4, most drownings happen in home swimming pools. About 30% of drownings among children 5-14 occur in swimming pools. All told, 75 percent of drowning deaths of children younger than 15 occurred at a swimming pool located at a private residence.

Drownings don’t always end in death. For every person who dies from drowning, five people receive emergency department care for non-fatal injuries.

Severe Pool Injuries

Brain damage. When a person is drowning, their brain is deprived of oxygen. As a result, they often suffer debilitating memory loss, seizures, learning disabilities, paralysis, and may even slip into a permanent vegetative state.

Spinal cord injuries. Swimming and diving accidents represent the fourth leading cause of spinal cord injuries, with diving accidents accounting for more than 1800 cases each year. Most swimming pool diving accidents happen from diving into the shallow end of a pool. The majority of the resulting injuries can lead to complete paralysis.

Disembowelment. Drain suction entrapment can result in drowning or evisceration. From 1999 to 2008, there were 83 reports of suction entrapment, including 11 deaths and 69 injuries. Regulations now require safer drain covers. However there are still some pools with old or defective drain covers. So a gruesome pool injury from entrapment is still a very real possibility.

Electrical injuries. Electrical systems that were installed incorrectly, poorly maintained, or are malfunctioning can leak electrical currents into pools severely injuring or killing swimmers.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome. ARDS is a serious lung condition which occurs when water fills up the air sacs in a person’s lungs.

Who Is Liable For Pool Accidents?

Attorney Jonathan Comitz and his team at Comitz Law can answer that question and any questions you have about the intricacies of filing a pool accident claim.

Pool owners and property managers have a legal obligation to prevent accidents and drownings from happening by implementing reasonable safety measures.

Swimming pool accident cases are typically brought on the legal theory of premises liability. The term “premises liability” refers to a set of rules that impart certain duties on landowners.

Some states, including Pennsylvania, base the specific duties owed on the status of the injured party. People who enter your property are divided into three categories: invitees, licensees and trespassers.

An invitee is someone who enters public or private property for the financial benefit of the property owner. Examples of invitees include shoppers at a store and delivery persons.

Property owners owe the highest duty of care to invitees. They must regularly inspect their premises for dangerous conditions; warn invitees of any known dangers; and fix any hazards or otherwise exercise reasonable care to protect invitees against the danger.

A licensee is someone with express or implied permission to enter the property for non-business reasons. Examples of licensees include family members attending a reunion and neighbors invited over for a pool party.

Property owners have a slightly lesser duty to licensees than to invitees. The owner has a duty to warn licensees of known dangers that the owner is aware of and knows that licensees are unlikely to discover on their own. Owners do not, however, have a duty towards licensees to inspect the premises.

A trespasser is someone who enters another’s premises without the owner’s consent. Property owners have very little duty of care to trespassers. A trespasser may recover for injuries sustained on land only if the possessor of land was guilty of wanton or willful negligence or misconduct. There is one important exception to the duty owed to trespassers. If the trespasser is a child, Pennsylvania applies the “attractive nuisance” doctrine. Under this doctrine, the landowner must exercise reasonable care to avoid a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm to children caused by an artificial condition that might be attractive to children.

Courts use five main principles to determine whether or not an object is an attractive nuisance:

The owner of the land knows or should know that children are likely to enter or trespass onto their property.
The owner of the land knows the object or condition on the landowner’s property could seriously harm or lead to the death of a child.
The children who trespass are too inexperienced or too young to understand the consequences of their actions or the risk that they face.
The cost to the landowner to fix the condition or the benefit of maintaining it is minimal compared to the risk it creates for children.
The landowner fails to take reasonable steps to correct the condition and eliminate any dangers to children.