How Health Fitness Centers Can Avoid Premises Liability Lawsuits

Recreational and health fitness centers like sports clubs are very successful in California. However, these facilities are not without their dangers and risks. Injury risks can lurk in the form of defective sports or gym equipment, slip and fall risks and other factors.
Athletic Business has the following tips for owners and operators of sports and fitness centers to avoid liability.
Your facility must be designed to meet all accepted standards of safety. Meeting these standards should be one of the main criteria while designing a center. In older centers, meeting such standards may prove more difficult and expensive, but must be done in order to avoid accidents on the field or in the club.
It goes without saying that you need to purchase liability insurance.
Many accidents in sports and health fitness centers occur because staff are not properly trained or equipped to recognize potential dangers. Your staff must be able to recognize dangers, and take steps to prevent risks to users or visitors. Staff must be able to recognize potentially faulty or malfunctioning gym equipment before these injure someone.
Customers must be given personal protection to guard against injury. For instance, if you operate a fitness club, your members should be given a complete body fitness assessment before they begin using your equipment. This assessment can include the use of tools like heart rate monitors and body composition analyzers.
Besides, clearing customers to use equipment safely, it is also important that you provide them with protective gear to minimize the risk of injury. In the case of athletes, this could include providing helmets, pads and other protective gear. In the case of racquet sports, it could include the use of protective eye gear, and in the case of contact sports, it could include providing athletes with mouth guards.
Your responsibility towards keeping people safe on the property does not end there. You must also provide free emergency medical aid in case of injuries on the property. Emergency first aid does not simply mean a battered first aid box with bare essentials. More and more numbers of jurisdictions now require a qualified medical care professional on the scene to provide emergency aid before the person is moved to a hospital or clinic.
Security of any premises is paramount. The idea of a gunman walking into your premises and opening fire may seem far-fetched right now, but as any California premises liability lawyer will tell you, these incidents are not that rare. Besides, you have to be prepared for other acts of violence or assault that impact the security of people who visit your premises.
Besides your premises must be free of slip and fall accident hazards, which can occur on broken stairs, slippery floors, and because of exercise equipment left lying around. If your property includes a pool, make sure it meets all pool safety compliance requirements under California laws.
The Reeves Law Group is not representing any party in the matters discussed in this posting.