Signing Waivers: Your Legal Options
Michael Babboni
Personal Injury
Florida being a tourist state, there are lot of different recreational activities for people to take part in. Some of them are pretty safe and pedestrian, such as the many families visiting the park attractions like Disney World Resort. But other activities have a definite element of risk, such as rock climbing, or extreme sports like sky diving and para-gliding.In these high risk events, the companies providing the services that allow people to take part in these more dangerous activities will require a waiver be signed before you can take part. The waiver is, essentially, a legal agreement not to sue the company should you sustain an injury.
But just how much protection do these waivers offer to the company? And how much do they strip away from you?
Expected Risks
Undertaking any strenuous activity brings with it a certain amount of risk and unpredictability. Skydiving, for example, can result in death in many ways for people that don’t take the proper precautions. Someone may panic and fail to pull their parachute. They may pass out from fear, and fall straight to the ground. They may even hit a bird on the way down and get injured. None of these injuries or deaths are the fault of the company, who provided good, working equipment to the people participating, and it is these unforeseen events that waivers for extreme sports are designed. They are to protect companies from unexpected hazards, events or unforeseen behaviors over which they have no control over.
This means that if, for example, you decide to go para-gliding, but are drunk and get into trouble because of your drunkenness, that’s not the fault of the company, and you can’t sue them. On the other hand, if the para-gliding company did not inspect their equipment, and gave you faulty straps that fell apart on you while you were in the air, the waiver does NOT protect them from negligence on their part.
Understand The Waiver
One thing that many people don’t do these days is actually take the time to stop, read and understand the waiver that is being signed. It’s understandable why this occurs; you want to quickly take part in a fun activity that everyone is looking forward to. Taking the time to stop and read the fine print seems like a way to ruin everyone’s fun on a day meant for recreation and relaxation. But waivers are legally binding documents, and you make certain agreements when you sign them. It is important you know what you are agreeing to.
It also means that you should know when your rights are being violated. Your own carelessness is something that waivers are designed to protect companies from. But a company’s negligence is never legally covered in a waiver. There is a certain minimum legal standard of protection that a company must provide to you, and if you “hold up your end of the deal” and did nothing that would tempt fate and result in an injury, nor did random chance strike you with bad fortune, then the company itself may be at fault.
If you’ve signed a waiver, but you’re certain that a mishap or injury you suffered was because of poor equipment, poor supervision or some other action that is the responsibility of the company, you probably have a case. Take your concerns to a personal injury lawyer and state exactly what happened, so a professional can assess the merits and guide on what your next steps should be. Just because the waiver was signed, it doesn’t mean that a company is absolved of all legal obligations.