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Recent court rulings on injury liability
offer lessons for every club operator
By Kristen Walsh
It’s one of every health club operator’s worst nightmares: a lawsuit. If a client is
injured, or worse, while at your facility and legal action ensues, you could be in
for months—or even years—of unnecessary stress, meetings, and paperwork,
not to mention the financial burden involved in defending yourself or, worse yet,
paying damages.
Today, legal experts say they’re seeing an increasing number of lawsuits in three
areas, relating to: automated external defibrillators (AEDs); misuse of equipment;
and facility maintenance.
HAve HeAlTHy HeArT Policies
Prior to the proliferation of laws requiring clubs to purchase AEDs and to employ
trained personnel to use them, the most common allegation in wrongful-death
claims was that a facility didn’t have one of the units, explains Brian P. Heermance,
a partner in the law firm of Morrison Mahoney LLP, based in Manhattan. “If the club
had simply kept an AED on-site, the plaintiff would argue, the decedent would have
survived the cardiac event without incident,” he says. “Thus, health clubs were
routinely defending claims arising out of their failure to have an AED.
“Not surprisingly, the growing availability of AEDs at clubs, in an effort to comply
with the new statutory obligations, has done little to stop the plaintiffs bar from
initiating wrongful death suits against the nation’s clubs,” he continues. “Now, the
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