Swimming Pool Drowning Wrongful Death Lawsuits
Swimming pool deaths by drowning are tragic. When that swimming pool death is from someone else’s negligence, it is even more complicated. When something like this happens to us, it has terrible mental and emotional effects.
It can often seem complicated to bring the guilty party to justice. You do not have to act alone to hold this person accountable. Once you’ve decided to seek compensation and take matters into your own hands, a wrongful death lawyer will help you to keep the wrongdoers accountable.
If someone you loved died in a swimming pool, you must be wondering how you can step in and make sure that justice is done for the person you lost. In this terrible time, we hope that this article may offer some clarity on whether there is any legal remedy for the swimming pool drowning of your loved one.
What is Swimming Pool Drowning Wrongful Death?
We must first recognize that there is a precise legal title for situations where someone died in a swimming pool: wrongful death. Wrongful death is a term that refers to the loss of life brought on by one or more circumstances that are solely under the direct control of another person, whether intentionally or not.
The phrase “wrongful death” refers to a victim whose death was brought on by the defendant’s careless behavior. Here, if negligence led to the death in a swimming pool, a wrongful death claim could be filed. Here, the issue is how to include drownings in the definition of wrongful death.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 3,500 drownings occur a year or almost 10 per day. Children are particularly vulnerable to drowning. The most common cause of injury-related death in children is drowning, which can happen in as little as 30 seconds to two minutes.
It’s crucial to comprehend the elements of a wrongful death claim and how the homeowner can be found to be at fault if your loved one drowns in someone else’s pool.
If you can demonstrate that the property owner’s negligence led to the loss of your child or another loved one who accidentally drowned in someone else’s pool, you could be entitled to file a wrongful death claim against them. A pool owner may be at fault for a pool drowning death for a variety of reasons:
- Equipment with flaws, such as defective ladders, slides, and diving boards
- Inadequate safety barriers, including fences, gates, latches, and locks, lead to unsupervised pool swimming
- Adequate pool signage is lacking
- The pool’s lifesaving supplies are insufficient
- Pool drains and chemicals that can be hazardous
These accidental drowning deaths might happen when the person slips and hits their head, knocking them out and making it impossible for them to swim to safety. It might also happen if the person gets stuck in the deeper part of the pool without understanding how to swim.
In more extreme situations, a pool may be covered while a swimmer is still inside and unable to leave. If the owner or manager had exercised reasonable diligence, they could have prevented the circumstances, then these conditions would form a wrongful death lawsuit for drowning.
Each state’s rules, however, specify who may file claims. For instance, even if you are no longer financially or physically reliant on your parent, certain states permit you to file a wrongful death lawsuit for the death of your parent. Other states make it impossible to do that same thing.
How Do You Hire a Lawyer for Wrongful Death?
The next step in your quest for justice for your loved one who drowned in a swimming pool is hiring a legal team specializing in wrongful death lawsuits. This phase is more crucial than you might imagine since wrongful death lawsuits can quickly become complex.
The difficulties of the courtroom will also likely be too much for you to handle when you are reeling from your loss’s emotional toll. Fortunately, you won’t have to spend much time in the courts because an attorney can handle this task for you.
When you meet with a wrongful death lawyer, it is best to bring as much information as possible so they can analyze your situation. For example, it is helpful to bring a copy of your loved one’s birth certificate, marriage license, and death certificate. You should also supply all photographs or video footage. Your personal injury attorney will walk you through the next actions to take after receiving this information.
When making a swimming pool wrongful death claim, an attorney is your best bet because they can handle the legal aspect on your behalf. But your lawyer will still have a challenging task ahead of them as they try to show that the person in charge of the swimming pool is culpable for your loved one’s untimely death. It relieves your burden and provides you with more knowledge about the case’s development.
What Does Proof of Swimming Pool Wrongful Death Require?
After you’ve hired a lawyer and given them all the information you can, they’ll look for any available proof to support the owner or manager of the swimming pool’s liability. Whether it was a public or private pool, swimming pool, or hot tub, and whether or not you received permission from the property owner to be there will be evaluated.
Swimming pool deaths involve a wide range of variables. Depending on where, why, and how the pool accident occurred, different things will need to be shown. A lawsuit for drowning brought against a water park is considerably different than one brought against a homeowner.
If the proper conditions are established, the owner, manager, or even both of the pool—regardless of whether it is home or commercial—will be held accountable for your drowning death lawsuit.
As we previously noted, unintentional drowning in a swimming pool has many potential causes and is one of the main causes of mortality in the nation. But to win a wrongful death lawsuit, you and your lawyer must demonstrate that the negligence of the swimming pool owner or manager played a role in the events that led to the death of your loved one.
Let’s suppose for a second that the unfortunate incident involved a minor accidentally drowning in a swimming pool. One would presume it is safe to enter the swimming pool by steps or a wall-mounted ladder extending from the sidewalk. But if one of the ladder’s rungs is unstable, the swimmer’s weight could cause it to fall off. To balance themselves, they might hit their head on the pool’s edge, which would knock them out.
When dealing with a business location, the pool owner is fully responsible for maintenance and swimming pool safety. They are in charge of making sure the entire swimming pool is secure and there is no danger of getting hurt in the water, thus they are accountable for a broken ladder that has not been restricted or fixed in any manner.
All that needs to be established may be that the ladder was damaged and that the facility failed to fix it if the unconscious swimmer drowns as they enter the pool due to a brain injury.
Alternatively, imagine that the same child ignored the warning signs and the lifeguard’s repeated warnings and continued to run around the edge of the pool. In that situation, any harm to the child may not be the consequence of careless monitoring because the pool owner and their staff took reasonable precautions to avoid it.
However, if there are no warning signs and the lifeguard fails to give the small children reasonable notice, you might be able to establish negligence through that method instead.
In many states, including Texas, pool safety equipment is mandated by law. For example, you might have a negligence case if there wasn’t a ring buoy in the vicinity of the swimming pool.
A 14-year-old girl was found to have drowned in her school’s swimming pool after the owner had covered it. Her coach had directed the entire swim team to go underwater beneath the pool cover as it was being moved over the swimming pool during swim practice, and that’s what happened.
The girl was trapped beneath the surface in the deep end of the pool since the pool cover was too heavy for her to lift. Unfortunately, the team and coaches missed her absence and left the pool. The girl was found that evening. Despite how tragic it is, her passing serves as a prime example of how a school’s incompetence resulted in a child’s fatal drowning.
With the right proof, you may hold irresponsible parties accountable for the sad loss of life in a swimming pool. If you ever experience this tragedy personally, take solace in the knowledge that justice is still possible.
What Money can you get from a Swimming Pool Wrongful Death?
When a wrongful death in a swimming pool is pursued and the defendant is found culpable, you are given financial compensation that can serve as some measure of justice in such unfortunate situations.
Although you are not doing this for the money and nothing can make up for the loss of a loved one, the damages that are awarded may help you deal with the aftermath of your loss because the court takes particular factors into account when estimating the value of your loved one to the best of the jury’s ability. To this end, some categories are taken into account. One of the factors taken into account while calculating damages is the family’s pain and suffering.
Naturally, drowning accidents are dreadful causes of death and create suffering for the victim’s surviving family members. This trauma is assessed using the “survival” claim. What effects the trauma may have had if the victim had lived is considered in this phase of the claim. It also accounts for the long-term financial costs and psychological costs related to the trauma.
The cost of the funeral and burial, the loss of affection and companionship, the loss of care, the loss of nurturing, and the loss of consortium are some other elements of the damages. All of these are taken into account when determining the damages granted after this devastating loss of life and love.
However, we are aware that you are not primarily concerned with the financial element of these matters. You aim to ensure that the negligent parties who caused this enormous loss are held accountable for their actions.
What are your results in drowning accident cases?
$4,250,000 Swimming Pool / Waterpark Wave Pool Brain Damage
A thirteen-year-old girl in a church group was spending the day at a Houston, Texas waterpark. She took her inner tube to join her friends in the wave pool. She was swept from her tube and found nearly five minutes later by another guest. She suffered severe anoxic brain damage after she was revived. Personal injury trial lawyer David Willis filed a lawsuit against the wave pool designer, equipment maker, tube manufacturer, and the local wave pool operator. They settled for $4.25 million in a hard-fought lawsuit. Expenses $41,356, Attorneys’ Fees $1.47 Million, Net to Clients $2,738,644
Settlements for Swimming Pool Drowning Deaths
It is awful and unimaginable to lose someone you care about due to drowning. When the perpetrators downplay their guilt, it becomes much more agonizing. However, you have the right to file a wrongful death claim against the person who caused the drowning and hold them accountable in a court of law.
Of course, there can be restrictions based on your state, and after analyzing your case, a lawyer will need to decide how much monetary damages can be recovered.
We hope that this makes it obvious that you are fully within your rights to seek compensation for a swimming pool drowning death. For a free consultation, contact a wrongful death law firm like the Willis Law Firm at 1-800-883-9858.