Keeping Your Business Safe From Injury Liability Claims

If you have a physical business where people are coming onto your property to shop, eat or otherwise conduct any commercial transactions, you need to be somewhat concerned about injury liability, the possibility that someone could injure themselves on your property, or otherwise could claim they were injured because of something you did or didn’t do.

While there is no one foolproof way to make sure that you never get sued when someone gets injured on your property, there are some things that you can do to make that possibility more remote than it otherwise would be.

Warn of All Dangers

One piece of common sense advice is to warn people of anything that is or which could be dangerous on your property. By warn, we mean the typical indicators (cones, signs, ropes, etc.); anything that tells people to be aware of something that could injure them.

Employees on the Roads

Do you have employees on the road for you or out in public? Anytime someone during work hours is behind the wheel of a vehicle, they are your employee, acting under the scope of your employment, and thus, you could end up being the one sued.

Hopefully, you already have insurance for this; your employees’ normal personal car insurance won’t cover them if they’re driving for business or commercial purposes. But even if you do, good training and background checks can go a long way to helping you defend accident claims caused by your employees when they’re on the road.

Inspect Your Property

It is on you to inspect your property on a regular basis to ensure that there is no debris, items, or other hazards, in areas where people walk. How often you have to inspect depends on the circumstances; an accountant’s office with minimal foot traffic doesn’t need to inspect their floors as often as a busy restaurant would have to do.

Make sure that you log inspections and have a set inspection schedule so that inspections aren’t missed. If you inspect frequently, it is less likely that you will be held liable if a danger does make its way onto your floors and injures someone.

Waivers of Liability

You can use liability waivers; these are documents where people promise they won’t sue if they are injured. They are legally enforceable, but the wording needs to be correct, as you can bet an injured victim who signs one will seek to evade its terms in order to pursue their claims for damages.

Make sure that you specifically release yourself from your own liability in the waiver, as well as for any actions that may be inherent or not inherent in the activity that customers are engaging in. Waivers are especially important if your business involves physical activities that someone can get injured participating in. And make sure if you’re dealing with minors in your business, that parents, not the minors, are the ones signing the waivers.

Call our West Palm Beach commercial litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig to help you keep your business safe from lawsuits.

Source:

lawinfo.com/resources/personal-injury/are-liability-waivers-enforceable-in-a-personal-injury-case.html