One of the main benefits of living in California is being able to enjoy relatively good weather throughout the year. While you might certainly enjoy not having to deal with seasonal changes, you might experience stress over the fact that outdoor activities are available to your kids all year round. Your older children may have the understanding needed to discern which of these activities are safe, but what about your younger kids? Many have come to us here at Lewis, Marenstein, Wicke, Sherwin & Lee, LLP after their children have been injured from such activity wondering what sort of legal recourse is available to them.
Swimming pools, construction sites, junkyards, and abandoned buildings may all be enticing attractions to your kids. Yet each of these attractions also present dangers that your children might not appreciate. Because of this, the law places the responsibility on the owners of the properties on which these attractions are found to protect children from them. This legal principle is known as the attractive nuisance doctrine, and according to the Cornell Law School, it even applies to scenarios where your child might have been on a person’s property without their permission.
Say that someone in your neighborhood has a swimming pool. Your young child is drawn to the pool even though the pool owner has not given them permission to use it. If your child gets in the pool and is injured (or worse yet, drowns), the attractive nuisance doctrine may allow you to take action against the pool owner.
If, however, the pool owner did attempt to restrict access to it (either by installing a hard cover or erecting a fence around it), they may be absolved of liability. More information on assigning liability in personal injury cases can be found throughout our site.