A dip in the pool, resulting in a severe injury due to slippery decks, defective equipment, or an improper balance of chemicals, can immediately transform a relaxing holiday into a complicated lawsuit. Nevada law, based on premises liability guidelines, permits victims to seek full financial compensation, identifying all negligent parties, including those other than the resort or property owner.

In determining the liability of your medical expenses, lost earnings, and pain and suffering, the law is concerned with negligence and legal duty. These usually involve several defendants because the burden of funds may not be limited to the immediate holder of the property. Successful claims are dependent on demonstrating violations of the duty of care, inadequate maintenance, poor supervision, or strict liability due to defective pool parts. A thorough investigation is necessary to identify all possible wrongdoing parties and to ensure the maximum attainment of the financial compensation you rightfully deserve.

Premises Liability in the State of Nevada

Before addressing the three parties you can sue if you were injured in a swimming pool, let us first examine premises liability, as it is key.

Premises liability is a legal concept that holds property owners or occupiers liable for injuries sustained on their premises due to unsafe conditions or hazards that they have created or failed to correct. The premises liability claim relies on proving that the owner of the property was negligent and that this negligence led to your injury. You demonstrate this by showing four major factors, which include:

  • That a duty of care was due to you
  • The breach of this duty happened
  • The breach caused you to suffer injuries
  • You suffered the damage as a result

The most significant element is the duty of care, which determines the extent of responsibility an owner owes to a visitor. This responsibility has always been subject to variation, depending on the visitor's legal status. However, contemporary Nevada courts pay more attention to the general justifiability of the conduct of the owner:

  • Invitee — As a paying guest at Las Vegas hotels, resorts, or casinos, you are classified as an Invitee. You are owed the utmost care. The owners should not only alert you to the dangers they are aware of, but also actively perform periodic checks to identify and rectify any implicit dangers, for example, keeping the pool deck slip-resistant or checking the chemical balance.
  • Licensee — If you are on the property with permission but for your own purposes, for example, a social guest at a private residence, you are a licensee. Owners are also required to caution licensees of the dangers they are aware of. However, they are not required to conduct inspections to identify unknown dangers.
  • Trespasser — You are deemed a trespasser should you come inside the property without permission. The least duty of care is that of owners, who usually have a duty not to willfully or wantonly harm. Another significant exception is the doctrine of attractive nuisance, which holds the owner responsible for any accidental injuries inflicted on children who trespass on the premises due to hazardous conditions, like unsecured pools.

In the context of your pool injury, negligence is a clear violation of the duty of care. Examples include:

  • Not putting up the correct markers for the depth of the pool
  • Inadequate or distracted lifeguarding
  • Allowing broken or faulty equipment, for example, missing drain covers or broken diving boards
  • Not cleaning up spills or broken tiles on the pool deck, thereby creating slippery surfaces
  • Maintaining a dangerous chemical imbalance in the water

Furthermore, you will have to demonstrate that the risk was predictable and the owner was aware of the risky state of affairs that harmed you or should have been aware of it after a reasonable examination.

Let us now look at the three parties you can sue:

  1. Property Owners

In a case involving compensation for an injury, the first strategic move is to correctly determine the party that was in control of the safety and maintenance of the pool, as this will determine the standard of evidence necessary and the degree of consideration required in your favor.

Hotels

Considering the huge business nature of Las Vegas, hotels and resorts are often alleged to be the focus of the claims. In this case, as an Invitee, you are automatically deemed the recipient of the utmost care and duty. This requires more than just a passive warning of hazards. Rather, the commercial owner must undertake the initiative of ensuring timely and regular checks of the location, and that facilities, including pool decks, lighting, non-compliant signs, and essential safety measures, like operational drain covers, are properly maintained.

The negligence claim against these business organizations focuses on proving that they have failed to employ safe working practices, including an insufficient number and inadequate training of lifeguards, which allows a violation of the 10/20 rule of lifeguard-to-customer ratios, or on policies that facilitate accidents, like serving patrons who are evidently intoxicated.

This standard is quite high compared to the different policies adopted towards injuries that have occurred at private premises, and this has shifted the emphasis towards proactive inspection procedures, ensuring legal adherence and predictability of potential dangers.

Homeowners

A claim against a private homeowner is more likely to be based on the inability to adequately secure the pool, especially when a child is involved. The key here will be the attractive nuisance doctrine, which holds homeowners liable in cases where a trespassing child is injured by a dangerous situation, like a pool without a lock, because the child is incapable of understanding the danger. In these instances, you demonstrate negligence when you prove that the homeowner did not install the correct fencing and self-latching gates, which are some preventive actions that should have been taken.

Homeowners Association (HOA)

On the other hand, you can sue a Homeowners Association (HOA) or apartment complex in case of injury in a common area pool. In this case, it is the collective entity, the HOA, or the outsourced property management company, which bears the immediate responsibility of collective maintenance, chemical balancing, and compliance with the regulations of public health, and which usually obligates you to inquire of the contractual arrangements by determining who has failed in its duty of care.

To navigate these different standards successfully, you should gather compelling evidence as soon as the injury has occurred to establish a strong base for the case, regardless of the defendant. The process begins with immediate medical care, which, in addition to treating your medical condition, also leaves a clear record of the magnitude and direct causation of your injuries. After taking this necessary measure, you will need to officially inform the relevant manager or staff member who was in charge at the time of the incident and ensure that they prepare an official incident report. Then you exercise complete control over the evidentiary process by extensively recording the scene, taking several photos and videos of the hazard, whether it is a faulty step, non-compliant depth marker, or poor lighting, and other possible causes of the hazard, before the liable party has a chance to start repair and cleanup. This detailed record is of vital importance, as it provides the requisite evidence of the owner's primary negligence, which is mandated by Nevada's new standard of comparative negligence.

Under this strict Nevada standard, you should establish that the owner of the premises or their representatives contributed at least 51% of the entire fault of the accident to secure any monetary damages. Consequently, all of the evidence you gather, not only the incident report that verifies the time and place of the incident, but also the photographs that show the hazard already present. This evidence directly counters any defense argument that you were primarily responsible for your own injury, including claims that the danger was "open and obvious" or that you acted carelessly.

Moreover, the financial scope of the claim is not limited to direct medical expenses alone, but also includes total compensation for all resulting damages, including:

  • Past and future medical expenses
  • Loss of wages
  • Non-economic damages, including pain and suffering

By diligently establishing the owner's breach of their specific duty and securing sufficient proof of their substantial liability, you effectively position your claim for maximum recovery.

  1. Third Parties

In a pool injury case, the liability is not often confined to the owner of the premises. In case the functioning of the pool or the actions of some other individual have led to your injury, then you have to investigate third-party liability to achieve full compensation.

Operator or the Pool Management Company

Commercial buildings, like hotels and apartment complexes, often outsource the safety and management services of their aquatic facilities to professional pool management companies or other third-party providers. Although the owner of the premises, for example, the resort, would remain liable for the premises, operations are delegated with a separate, contractual level of care to the management company.

Examples of negligence by management/operators include:

  • Poor staffing and training — This involves not recruiting sufficient certified lifeguards (a primary duty of care failure) or providing improper training, which results in a slow response to an emergency.
  • Poor maintenance procedures — This involves the failure to conduct regular inspections, which can lead to hazardous levels of chemicals, malfunctioning filtration systems, or a lack of reporting and correction of physical accidents, such as broken tiles.
  • Violation of regulations — Violation of the state or local health and safety codes on the marking of the depths of pools, signage, or equipment within pools.

To sue a third-party operator successfully, it is necessary to have a management agreement between the operator and the property owner. This contract clearly stipulates the legal responsibility of the third party, for example, to maintain chemical logs, maintenance plans, and staffing, and to assist you in identifying where exactly the duty of care was violated.

Negligent Swimmers

There is a further complication in injuries arising from the careless or improper actions of a third individual: another swimmer or a guest. The actions of the individual in these situations could be the primary cause of the accident. However, the owner or operator can still be found guilty of negligence for failing to supervise or control the surroundings appropriately.

Examples of negligence by swimmers:

  • Reckless horseplay — This could include pushing or shoving other people in the pool
  • Shallow water diving — Causing injuries to the head, neck, or spinal injuries to themselves or others
  • Intoxicated swimming — Engaging in dangerous behavior in an apparently impaired condition

In a situation where your injury is a direct result of the direct action of a swimmer, you sue the swimmer based on a general negligence theory. Nevertheless, the property owner or management company is often still a defendant because it was their negligence, for example, failing to provide sufficient security, failure to enforce pool rules, or over-serving an inebriated guest, that created the dangerous condition leading to the injury.

Determining Shared Liability (Nevada's Modified Comparative Negligence)

The altered comparative negligence rule (NRS § 41.141) applies to the multi-party cases. This law is used when the blame lies with the victim and multiple defendants, for example, the hotel, the management company, and a negligent swimmer.

You will only be able to recover damages when it is established that your negligence, alone, was no more than the negligence of all the defendants. In case you are determined to have been at fault 51% or more, you are not entitled to compensation.

If the courts award you compensation, you will still be held partially at fault, and this percentage will be deducted from the damages. More to the point, Nevada makes use of several liability (except in a few cases). Thus, every defendant is liable to pay the percentage of the judgment that corresponds to the percentage of their fault. An example would be that when the total fault is split as:

  • Victim, 20%
  • Hotel, 40%
  • Management company, 40%

In this situation, the hotel would be liable for 40% of the entire damages, and the management company would be liable for the remaining 40%. The 20% that can be attributed to the victim's fault is subtracted from the ultimate award. This is why it is essential to categorize all parties involved to ensure accurate monetary compensation.

  1. Defective Pool Equipment Manufacturers

Although premises liability primarily concerns the property owner, some pool injuries are direct consequences of a failure in the physical equipment, which may involve the manufacturer and distributor in legal action due to product liability law. This is a critical avenue of compensation in cases where the hazard is caused by a faulty item, like a broken slide, a defective diving board, a malfunctioning pool pump, or a faulty drain cover that poses an actual suction risk.

In contrast to premises liability, which requires demonstrating that the property owner was negligent, meaning they knew or should have known about the danger, product liability in Nevada is often based on a doctrine known as strict liability. This is a significant advantage for you, as you typically do not need to prove that the manufacturer was careless. You need only to establish:

  • The defect that made the product unreasonably dangerous was its flaw
  • The flaw was present when the product was no longer in the defendant's custody
  • This flaw directly caused your injury

Product liability claims typically focus on one of the three categories of defects:

  • Manufacturing defects — Although the product's design was safe, an assembly or manufacturing mistake occurred, resulting in the particular product being defective, for example, a diving board that cracks due to the incorrect type of glue being used in one batch.
  • Design defects — A defect occurs in the entire line of a product due to a flaw in the design or blueprint of the product, regardless of whether it is produced precisely. For example, a pool slide design that is too steep to be used, or a drain cover design with excessive suction capacity. You need to frequently demonstrate that a more secure and viable alternative design was in place.
  • Failure to warn or warning defects — The product in question was known to be dangerous, and the manufacturer did not provide the appropriate instructions or warnings concerning the non-obvious risks to which the product could expose the user, for example, a pool chemical that requires strict mixing conditions but lacks sufficient warning labels.

The most crucial step in a product liability case is securing and preserving the defective product. Do not discard, alter, or permit anyone to make any alterations to the product once the accident has occurred. The physical item is the cornerstone of your evidence. It enables the professionals to do the testing and analysis required to identify the defect (design or manufacturing) and conclusively attribute it to your injuries.

When you dispose of the product, it will be much harder to prove the statement, as the manufacturer will likely claim that the defect is impossible to confirm. This paperwork, the faulty item, plus the expert witness statements and product specimen, are essential in ensuring that the entire chain of distribution (manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer) is held accountable in terms of financial responsibility.

Find a Personal Injury Attorney Near Me

Navigating premises liability involves much more than suing a single hotel. Various companies can shoulder the cost burden as a result of careless pool operators, as well as maintenance companies and equipment manufacturers with faulty equipment. One way to overcome the 51% comparative negligence threshold is to ensure that you gather evidence promptly.

If you or a loved one became a victim of a pool accident, call Las Vegas Personal Injury Attorney Law Firm. We have the expertise to untangle complex multi-party claims and work to ensure that you secure the best possible outcome from your financial claims. Call us at 702-996-1224 for assistance.