Traveling with your family can be a rewarding experience where you’ll have the chance to build a lifetime of rich memories together, but that vacation can quickly sour if one of your children gets hurt while you’re on vacation.
Liable for Your Child’s Injury at a Hotel
A child getting hurt while their family is on vacation is sadly not an uncommon experience. The excitement of the change in schedules, coupled with unfamiliar territory and swimming pools can spell disaster for some kids.
So what happens if your child is hurt at a resort or hotel where you’re staying and who is liable for your child’s injuries?
The first thing to consider is: is the hotel or resort liable for all injuries that happen on their property? The short answer is no. A hotel is only responsible for injuries that happened when the following elements can be proven:
Duty,
Breach of duty,
Causation and,
Damages.
Let’s get into what these mean.
Duty is the hotel’s responsibility to maintain reasonably safe premises for all guests, including children. This means that the hotel or resort is also responsible for periodic maintenance and inspection of its premises.
Breach of duty is when the hotel’s lack of duty contributed to an injury. For example, if a tile near the pool was cracked and continued to deteriorate to the point that when your child ran over it, they cut their foot open, it could be argued that the hotel didn’t take the necessary steps to inspect and maintain the tile.
Causation is about the link between the breach of duty and the damages, which, in this case, would be your child’s injuries (for example, their cut foot). The hotel didn’t perform its duty by inspecting and maintaining the tile. This led to the tile breaking and becoming dangerous. The tile cut open your child’s foot when they stepped on it. Your child did not arrive at the resort with a hurt foot, so the causation exists between the breach of duty and the injuries (or damages).
Finally, damages. As we mentioned above, damages, in this case, refer to the injuries sustained. However, the damages also mean the economic losses to your family like medical bills, loss of earnings due to one of the parents having to stay with the child, the loss of the rest of the vacation, etc. There are also non-economic damages that should be considered as well, like pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life that can be associated with severe personal injuries.
Each of these elements needs to be weighed and considered to figure out if the hotel or resort was liable for what happened. If your vacation was ruined because of an injury that occurred while you were at the resort and you suffered both emotionally and financially for a situation that could have been avoided, you’ll want to sit down and talk to some personal injury lawyers in LasVegas who can help you sort through each of the above elements and give you an accurate assessment on whether or not you and your family have a case.
Your children’s health is of utmost importance and no parent wants to feel they put their child in harm’s way, which is why the advice of a lawyer in situations like these can go far to alleviate not only your child’s suffering but your own.
