Florida Swimming Pool Injury Attorneys Information on Liability Regarding Lakes & Pools
Florida Negligence Law: Lakes & Swimming Pools
Injury lawyers often state that a property owner is not liable for dangerous conditions that occur in natural or artificial bodies of water, except where there is an unusual condition not typically present in a similar body of water, or the condition constitutes a trap, or the landowner performs a willful or wanton negligent act that causes the injury. Accordingly, owners of artificial lakes, fish ponds, mill ponds, gin ponds, and other pools, streams, and bodies of water are not guilty of actionable negligence on account of drowning therein unless they are constructed so as to constitute a trap or raft or unless there is some unusual element of danger lurking about them not existent in ponds generally.
Thus, a minor deviation in the depth of a lake does not constitute a dangerous condition where lakes typically change depth by reason of the amount of rainfall, nor does the presence of plant life and debris constitute an unusual condition sufficient to impose liability on the property owner. A deep-water drop-off in a lake may or may not constitute a concealed danger so as to impose liability on the property owner in a drowning case. Further, neither an allegedly steep and precipitous drop-off at the border of a canal, nor an allegation that the area is dark at night and the canal scarcely visible, transform an ordinary body of water into a trap or hidden danger.
Caution: Although the fact that water is shallow, and insufficient for diving, may not ordinarily render it a dangerous condition, it may be a dangerous condition where a person would not be aware of the shallow depth.
An owner of a body of water, natural or artificial, is not required to fence it or post guards or erect signs in areas that are not designated for swimming.
Swimming Pool Injury Lawyer Observation: A governmental entity operating a public swimming area will have the same operational-level duty to invitees as a private landowner, that is, the duty to keep the premises in a reasonably safe condition and to warn the public of any dangerous conditions of which it knows or should have known. The test for whether the governmental entity owes such an operational-level duty to safely operate the public swimming area is not whether the body of water has been formally designated as a public swimming area. Rather, the test is whether, under all the circumstances, the actions of the government entity has held the area out to the public as a swimming area or has led the public to believe the area was designated a swimming area.
The sponsor of a water skiing competition can be held liable for injuries sustained by a participating water skier, pursuant to the statute governing vessel safety during marine events, even though the competition is held in a non-navigable man-made lake.
If you have additional questions about a swimming accident resulting in injury of death, contact a negligence attorney at your convenience.
For information regarding private pool fencing criteria to prevent drowning, please review Saftey Barrier Guidelines CPSC (pdf).
