Taking Care Of Your Swimming Pool Can Keep You Out Of Trouble
Michael Babboni
Personal Injury
One of the great things about Florida and its weather is that homeowners can enjoy the luxury of a swimming pool in the backyard all year round. In some cases, the swimming pool may even be the crown jewel of a home, being the centerpiece for all the good times that family and friends have when they enter a home.This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to make sure you take good care of your pool, especially the water quality. Because if you don’t, you may actually find yourself in some legal trouble.
Injuries Aren’t Just Physical
One thing we like to stress here is that personal injury cases can arise from carelessness in the environment that can lead to injuries. Wet tile near the swimming pool, can cause a slip and fall. Improper fencing can lead to children being lured to the pool and possibly drowning, which a homeowner can be held accountable for. But the dangers that a pool presents aren’t just in the form of physical injuries, but bacterial risks as well.
Water is an ideal medium for disease transmission. Most bacteria thrive in a wet environment, and the warm temperatures of Florida ensure that watery locations like swimming pools are also hospitable to germs, bacteria and other contagions. This is one of the reasons why chlorine, and ensuring a good chemical balance in a swimming pool, is so important for good, safe, swimming pool maintenance and use.
Illness Is Also Your Responsibility
This means that if you aren’t diligent about maintaining the correct chemical levels in your pool, it can become a breeding ground for bacteria that can make people sick. Should you continue to neglect your responsibilities as a pool owner, but then invite people over to use that pool, there’s a real risk that they may contract a disease from the contagions in your swimming pool.
If that should happen, and the guests realize that your pool is the source of their illness, they have the grounds for a personal injury case, especially if the illness causes them to lose income from their work and/or seek expensive medical treatments in order to recover.
Cryptosporidium, for example, is a germ that, when contracted, can cause persistent diarrhea for up to three weeks. In 2016, the CDC recorded 32 cases of this illness all directly related to transmission from swimming pool use. All it takes to contract the disease in a swimming pool is for someone to swallow a little bit of the pool water, and the germs will enter the system.
Protect Yourself & Your Guests
As with any activity, such as owning a pet, or operating a motorcycle, pool ownership comes with some responsibilities, including maintenance. It’s understood that when you decide to own a pool you are agreeing to take on those maintenance responsibilities. If you don’t, and people using your pool contract an illness, you put yourself at risk of legal action. This is especially true if it becomes public knowledge that you knew your pool might have presented a health risk and but you decided not to do anything about it, because it was too much effort.
And if you, your family or friends have gotten ill as a result of using someone’s swimming pool, you may have grounds for legal action. Talk to a personal injury lawyer about your situation, and see where you stand.