Swimming pools are supposed to be a place of fun and relaxation. Whether you are at a public swimming pool, a waterpark, or your friend’s or family’s house, the last thing on your mind is someone getting hurt. Unfortunately, these types of accidents are far too common for a variety of reasons.
If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident involving a swimming pool, whether it is a community pool or a private pool, having an experienced attorney by your side can make a significant difference in ensuring you get the compensation and justice you deserve. Here at Charles Boyk Law Offices, our team has a proven track record of helping those injured in Toledo swimming pool accidents. We give compassionate support to families dealing with the loss of loved ones in tragic swimming pool accidents.
With over 100 years of combined legal experience, our Toledo swimming pool accident attorneys are highly specialized in handling swimming pool accidents. Liability surrounding swimming pools can be incredibly complicated, and our team has a proven track record of holding pool owners accountable for their pool accidents. Let us put our experience to work on your behalf!
Swimming Pool Accident Statistics
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Pool Safely Program, from 2019 to 2021, an average of 358 children fatally drowned in pools or spas. This is coupled with nearly 6,500 annual ER visits relating to pools. 80% of these accidents occur at private residences.
The American Red Cross estimates that around 4,000 people die each year from unintentional drowning. This averages out to 11 people drowning per day. They also estimate that the number of non-fatal drownings is double that of the fatal drownings, with an average of 22 people per day. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children between 1 and 4 years old.
Drowning is also a leading cause of death for people with Autism, as they are nearly 40 times as likely to die by drowning compared to the general population.
Common Causes of Toledo Swimming Pool Accidents
1) Drowning / Near Drowning Accident
There are a lot of things that can cause drowning. These include an inability to swim, panicking while swimming, muscle cramps, seizure or heart attack, and inadequate supervision. There are many precautions one can take to avoid a drowning or a near/drowning experience, including:
- Teaching children to swim adequately and to never swim unsupervised. There are some places that even teach toddlers to float on their backs in pools to prevent them from drowning.
- Learn the signs of drowning so that you can better notice when someone else is drowning.
- Learning CPR to help get water out of people’s lungs
- Ensure that your pool and pool equipment are properly maintained and kept up to code.
- Ensure that the pool is properly fenced in to prevent children from accidentally falling in unsupervised.
2) Diving Accidents
Diving accidents can cause serious head/brain injuries and even lead to death. They often come from diving into too shallow waters. To prevent these kinds of accidents, there should be signage alerting people to the depth of the water, and if the water is too shallow, there should be no diving signage as well.
3) Slip and Falls
Slips and falls near pools are incredibly common. Pool toys and hoses can be potentially hazardous if people are not expecting them to be there. Splashing water makes the area surrounding the pool more dangerous by making it more slippery. These conditions increase the chances of falling and potentially breaking a bone or even cracking your head open. This is why it is so important to make sure people are not running near pools, and keep things like toys and hoses stowed away when they are not actively being used.
4) Intoxication
Alcohol and other substances do not mix well with swimming or diving. These substances affect our ability to judge depths and distance, impair our ability to swim. Being under the influence of these substances can cause serious injuries, including death. According to the CDC, nearly two-thirds of water recreation deaths involve alcohol impairment. Alcohol impairment also makes supervising children who are in pools more dangerous due to slower reaction times.
5) Defective Equipment
Pools must be regularly maintained in order to ensure everyone’s safety. Damaged or defective pool equipment can pose a serious risk of injury if not addressed. For example, federal law requires that pool drains have entrapment devices that protect hair, clothing, or limbs from being caught in the drain. If these entrapment devices are missing or damaged, pool owners may be liable to the injured party.
Faulty Diving Boards can also cause serious harm, including death. The diving board can be faulty for not being up to code, not being properly maintained, or being improperly produced by the manufacturer. These defects can cause the diving board to snap while someone is on it, leading to further injury.
Pool ladders that are not properly installed can also pose a serious risk of injury or death. Depending on the material of the ladder, it can cause deep cuts through the skin, trap people in the water, and potentially cause someone to drown.
Ohio Attractive Nuisance Doctrine
Attractive Nuisance is a doctrine in Ohio that imposes liability on landowners for harm to children that resulted from man-made conditions on their property. The doctrine requires that landowners exercise reasonable care to protect children from artificial conditions that pose an unreasonable risk of death or serious bodily harm. This doctrine may require landowners to take extra precautions to protect trespassing children, including putting a fence up, making sure gate locks work, and taking other precautions.
The doctrine applies when:
- The landowner knows or should know that children are likely to trespass
- The Condition is inherently dangerous, and
- The children, due to their youth, fail to recognize the risk involved.
This doctrine recognizes that children are entitled to a higher degree of care due to their inability to foresee and avoid certain dangers. This doctrine does not apply to conditions that are open and obvious or to natural conditions like a pond or lake unless there are specific artificial conditions present.
Some conditions that have been treated as an attractive nuisance in the past include bike ramps, trampolines, play sets, and even oil wells
While natural bodies of water like ponds are not considered attractive nuisances, swimming pools and diving boards can be attractive nuisances, especially with younger children who may not fully appreciate the risk the pool may pose. The attractive nuisance doctrine also covers people who were injured while trying to save the child in danger. This means that if you, as a parent, are trying to save your child from a neighbor’s pool, you may be qualified for some compensation. A Toledo swimming pool accident lawyer may use this doctrine to help your case.
How do I Spot Someone Drowning?
Drowning looks different from what most people think. In a lot of cases, you may not hear anyone speak or call for help at all. It is far more common that the drowning victim is completely silent because if you cannot breathe, you cannot speak. While the following may not be what you see on TV or in Movies, these are the warning signs of drowning:
- People are quiet, especially if they are a child
- If the person is hyperventilating or gasping for air
- If they are upright in the water not using their legs
- Look at their eyes to see if they are glassy, or unable to focus or close
- If their hair is covering their forehead or eyes
- If their head is low in the water, and may be tilted back with the mouth open
- They do not look like they are in distress, and may actually look blank.
- They cannot answer if they are alright
- They are unsuccessfully trying to roll over on their back
- They are trying to swim in a particular direction but are making no forward progress
- Look to see if it looks like they are climbing an invisible ladder
By knowing these signs, you can help prevent drowning and help keep pools safe through proper supervision.
What Should I Do If I See Someone Drowning?
If you spot someone drowning, there are a variety of things you should do to save them. One of the big things to remember is not to put yourself at risk by simply jumping in to get them. When someone is drowning, they may instinctively push you down into the water in order to save themselves. This is especially important in deeper pools. In order to safely stop someone from drowning, you should
- Use anything around you to safely bring in the drowning person from the water
- Call others around you for help. This can ensure that people know what is going on and can get as many people to potentially help with CPR as possible.
- Lay the victim on their back and move their head and chin backward to try and clear their airways
- Pinch their nose as their head is tilted back and breathe into their mouth with yours to perform a rescue breath
- After five rescue breaths, begin CPR
- After performing CPR for at least one minute, if others are around, switch off to someone else and then call 911. If no one is around, call 911 after 1 minute of CPR.
- You should then continue to perform CPR until after the ambulance arrives
Acting quickly can help minimize whatever effects that a near-drowning experience could have on the person.
Do I have a Case if there is a “No Lifeguard on Duty” Sign?
It is not uncommon for some community pools to have “No Lifeguard on Duty” signs hanging near the pool. In fact, Ohio requires all pools not obligated to have a lifeguard to post the warning sign prominently in the public swimming pool area and state “Warning: No Lifeguard.” If they do not have a lifeguard, they are also required to post signs stating, “Swimming alone is not recommended” and “Children must be supervised.”
These warning signs are not adequate when the pool itself is required to have a lifeguard. Whether or not a pool is required to have a lifeguard depends on the number of swimmers allowed in the pool and the square footage of the pool. For more information on public pool requirements in Ohio, click here.
While posting these signs may help some pool owners avoid some liability, it does not mean they are immune to damage relating to injuries that occur at their pools. Even if they post these signs, a successful lawsuit may be filed against them.
While a “No Lifeguard on Duty” sign may provide an adequate warning in some cases, they do not adequately warn about other potential defects in the pool, such as cracked tiles, broken ladders, or out-of-code diving boards.
In short, just because there is a sign warning of no lifeguard, does not mean that the pool owner is completely absolved from liability, and you may have a case. A Toledo swimming pool lawyer will surf through statutes and regulations like these to help your case.
What Can an Experienced Toledo Swimming Pool Injury Attorney Do for Me?
Getting an experienced Toledo swimming pool injury attorney can help ensure that you get the justice and compensation you deserve. Our team of experienced swimming pool accident attorneys is dedicated to securing the financial compensation you need and holding responsible parties accountable for your injuries.
Our experienced attorneys can do the following to help ensure that you get the compensation and justice you deserve
- Investigate the Scene of the Accident: Thoroughly investigate the pool and surrounding areas to notice any defects that might have caused the injury.
- Consult with Experts: Collaborate with local inspectors, pool engineers, swimming pool engineers, and diving coaches to determine what factors contributed to the accident
- Conduct Research: Pool injuries can be very fact-specific and technical. An experienced attorney will conduct research to find the necessary case law to back up your case.
- Assess Your Injuries: Review medical documents and work to make sure you are receiving the treatment you need through doctor referrals
- Obtain Key Information: Interview witnesses, pool staff, and other experts through depositions to make sure we have all the information regarding your case
- Build Your Case: Use years of experience to build the best legal strategy to use in your case.
- Negotiate with Insurers: Try to negotiate a settlement with liability insurance (e.g., homeowner’s insurance) companies to get compensation as quickly as possible without having to go to trial.
- Leverage Legal Experience
- Keep You Informed: Keep you updated with all changes in your case as they happen, and explain what happens at each stage of the litigation process.
By hiring an experienced swimming pool attorney, you can ensure that you are getting the compensation and justice you and your loved ones deserve.
Charles Boyk Has Stood in Your Shoes
Having a loved one get injured or killed in an accident can often be an incredibly difficult time and process. It is often hard to express how you are feeling to others because they simply don’t understand what you are going through. This makes it harder to feel supported by others during those challenging times.
No one understands these feelings better than Charles Boyk himself. Chuck’s son Josh was seriously injured after slipping off a 10-foot diving board that was not up to code. Chucks knows the feeling of getting that call. Knows the anguish of waiting to see if a loved one is going to wake up in that hospital bed. He even knows what it is like to go through a lawsuit on behalf of his son, and the uncertainty that comes with swimming pool cases. In the end, he was able to work with our very own Michael Bruno to ensure his son got the compensation and justice that he deserved.
If you want to learn more about Chuck’s story, you can read all about his book “I’ve Been in Your Shoes. He wrote this book so that you know that you are not alone in this process and to show that he really does know what you are going through. You can request a free copy of the book here.
Examples of Toledo Swimming Pool Accident Settlements
Unsupervised Child Gets Trapped under Neighbor’s Pool Cover
Our client left their young child with the child’s grandfather while they went to work. The grandfather took a shower, leaving the young child completely unattended. While the grandfather was in the shower, the child went to the neighbor’s backyard and fell into the pool, getting trapped under the cover. A search for the child went on for hours before they were discovered drowned in the pool.
With the help of our compassionate team of Toledo swimming pool accident attorneys, we were able to secure a large settlement from the grandfather’s homeowners’ insurance policy, and were even able to get some compensation from the neighbor for not having a working fence around the pool.
Fall at Club Pool leads to Month-Long Hospital Visit
A boy was playing with his brother at a tennis club pool. He went up to the 10-foot diving board. As he stepped back to begin running off the board, he slipped and hit his head on the concrete. The boy underwent multiple brain injuries and contracted meningitis. This led him to be hospitalized for almost an entire month.
Our team of Toledo swimming pool lawyers investigated and found out that the diving board was not up to code, and even interviewed pool managers who stated the owners were undermining the efforts to make the diving board less risky. Our team contacted numerous BIG 10 diving coaches to testify on how unsafe the diving board was. After 2 mediations, our team of experienced Toledo swimming pool accident attorneys was able to secure a massive settlement for the boy for his injuries.
Reach Out to An Experienced Toledo Swimming Pool Accident Lawyer Today!
If you or a loved one was either injured or killed in a swimming pool accident, you need a skilled personal injury attorney to navigate your case and secure the compensation you deserve. Here at Charles E. Boyk Law Offices, our experienced Toledo swimming pool injury attorneys are dedicated to helping you through these difficult times because we have stood in your shoes and know how difficult this process is for people. As one of the top-rated personal injury firms in Ohio, we understand the complexities of swimming pool accident cases and will work tirelessly to ensure that you receive the compensation and justice that you are entitled to.
Reach out to us today for a free case evaluation and discover how we can assist you in getting the justice and financial recovery you need. If we are unable to take your case, we will refer you to someone who may. Let us put our experience, connections, and expertise to work for you and support you every step of the way.
