M.D: Suppose you get injured at a fitness center in Florida. Who should be held responsible for the accident? Can you sue the fitness center?
Physical fitness is essential to human health. This is the main reason people in Florida and across the country join fitness centers and athletic institutions. If you ever get injured due to a fitness center’s or trainer’s negligence, talk to an experienced personal injury attorney who can analyze the details of your case and inform you if you have a strong claim for monetary compensation.
Both severe and minor injuries at fitness centers are more common than you think. Recently, the Consumer Product Safety Commission revealed that there were over 62,700 injuries related to fitness equipment that were treated in emergency care rooms in 2014. Over 24,000 of those cases involved treadmills.
Fitness center owners and operators usually ask you to sign a waiver releasing them from different forms of liability in case you get injured. These waivers are often designed to prohibit you from filing a personal injury claim against the fitness center owner, employee, or operator whose negligent acts lead to your injury.
The good news is that you can still take legal action despite the contract that you signed. To explore this option, you need an experienced personal injury attorney who can successfully analyze the language of the waiver, the circumstances of your gym-related injuries, and advise you accordingly. The fitness center might be negligent if injuries were caused by any of the following.
- Incorrect setup of the fitness equipment such as barbells, weights, and more.
- Poorly-maintained fitness equipment.
- Broken handrails, slippery floors, shoddy electrical work, and other instances of poorly-maintained fitness equipment.
- Employee or personal trainer negligence.
Fitness centers, like all other retail businesses in Florida, have an obligation to maintain their premises in reasonably safe conditions so that clients don’t sustain preventable injuries. This legal obligation includes the duty to check their premises regularly for faulty or broken equipment and other hazards in the property.
The fitness center operator or owner should warn clients of any potential risks and foreseeable hazards. For instance, well-designed posters are an effective way to alert clients to the risks linked to using certain fitness equipment.
For a fitness facility to be held responsible under the theory of negligence, the victim or plaintiff should establish the following elements of negligence by a preponderance of sufficient evidence:
- You owed a duty of care (the gym operator or owner had an obligation to provide a safe environment and one of all known and possible hazards).
- The fitness center breached that duty of care owed to the victim. For instance, the gym operator failed to warn you about a slippery floor.
- This breach was the direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuries.
If you firmly believe your fitness-related injury was a direct result of a fitness trainer’s negligence, consult with an experienced personal injury attorney. Just because you signed a waiver, don’t assume that you do not have legal options to seek compensation for the damages you suffered. In most cases, waivers signed in fitness centers don’t always cover all the details and might not be enforceable in some circumstances.
An experienced personal injury lawyer can help analyze the details of a waiver and circumstances surrounding the event that led to your injuries. Armed with this information, the attorney can help you file a strong personal injury claim and get the amount of compensation you deserve. Personal injury claims, particularly if you signed a waiver, could be very complicated. This is why you need an experienced Zimmet & Zimmet personal injury attorney on your side.
