by Bill Pickett
Today, we’re going to share a few words of advice regarding holiday safety as the Yakima Valley community prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. During these special times, everyone wants to focus on spending an enjoyable season with loved ones, and no one wants their cheer spoiled by accidents or injuries. But as we all know – accidents can happen at any time. So let’s examine some ways we can be proactive in preventing accidents to promote holiday safety:
- Practice Holiday Safety by Identifying Slipping Hazards
- Legal Obligations to Visitors
- A Case of Negligence: Grandma Got Ran over by a Reindeer
- A Visit From Santa
- Promote Holiday Safety in the Kitchen
- Happy Holidays!
Practice Holiday Safety by Identifying Slipping Hazards
Here in the heart of Washington, we are all aware of the dangers that snow and ice can pose. These forces of nature are responsible for an immeasurable amount of injuries around the holiday season each year. This primarily takes the form of people slipping and falling. In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the third leading cause for death in the United States is accidental injury, of which falls make up the majority of cases.
Incredible as it may seem, falling from a standing position is enough to cause death. You only need to witness this once to believe it. I used to think death by falling would typically occur from a great distance, like a cliff or a platform, but this is not the case. When I personally witnessed a fall, I watched the person’s feet fly out from under them and they made a sudden impact with the ground, which resulted in a horrific tearing of their shoulder. Now I understand how someone can die just from falling from a standing position.
Inclement weather is a primary thing to bear in mind regarding holiday safety when you are hosting any kind of gathering. It’s critical to be aware of how people will be entering and exiting your property, and where they might encounter snow and ice. Make certain you are prepared to use deicer to treat any walkways that people will step on as they enter your home, office, or venue for the celebration.
Remember that people don’t intentionally run out and slip. Either they go somewhere you didn’t expect, where there may be known hazards, or they encountered an unexpected hazard along the intended route. Please make certain that any visitors to your property stay safe this holiday season by maintaining clear walkways for them, and not leaving this as an afterthought to other preparations.
Legal Obligations to Visitors
Speaking of visitors, as we think about holiday safety, there are a few different classifications of people you may encounter on your property. These definitions are not particular to the holiday season, they are given by Washington law and apply at all times of the year:
- Business Invitees – These are people who come to your property for a business purpose – they are there to conduct a transaction. In a grocery store, the shoppers who enter there are considered business invitees. Individuals who attend a commercial event also fall under this category.
- Licensees – Those who have implicit permission to enter your property are represented here. Typically, family members and friends would be considered licensees.
- Trespassers – Individuals who do not have your permission to be present are considered trespassers.
For each category of visitor, there is a different kind of responsibility the law imposes upon you. For example, when dealing with business invitees, you are required to act as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances. This includes not only monitoring and maintaining your property in a safe manner, but you also must inspect your property to discover dangerous conditions that an invitee may not have been able to discover by simply coming onto your property.
Business Invitees
If you’re a business owner in the Yakima Valley in winter, you want to make sure that before you open for business in the morning you are clearing your access points by deicing and scraping any accumulated snow off. Why? Because you don’t want clients to slip, fall, break a bone, or become incapacitated in any way. It would be bad for business!
But your responsibility extends beyond preparation for inclement conditions – you need to ensure those sidewalks are safe to walk upon at any given time. This means you must inspect for walkways that become broken, chipped, or obstructed, and for anything else that becomes defective during the course of operating your business. You need to address anything that could potentially become an area of harm for another person.
Licensees
Licensees have implied permission to be on your property, but their presence is generally allowed for a more limited purpose. If you have a friend over for a chat in your kitchen, this does not necessarily give them permission to go into your bedroom and pilfer around in your closet. If they were to do that, they have arguably exceeded the scope of the permission they were given. So if they get injured while in your closet, you’d have some form of a defense, as they were not supposed to be there in the first place.
However, what if your licensee visitor is standing in your kitchen and you have a tripping hazard? Maybe it’s planks on the floor that are uneven and you haven’t taken the time to nail them down. If someone were to catch a toe on that and become injured during the course of the visit, you may be liable. Your duty is to ensure that areas open to licensees are safe. Injuries like this commonly occur on driveways, stairs, and steps into and out of a home. Oftentimes homeowners will do their own work and it is not up to code, so what they construct ends up hazardous to people who are not familiar with the residence.
Trespassers
Now for a trespasser, as you would expect, your duty is much lower. They are not supposed to be on your property in the first place. You are not allowed to go up to them and willfully and wantonly injure them (so no setting booby traps!) but beyond that, you have little responsibility to those individuals. People often worry that an individual could break into their property and afterwards sue them for injuries, but this is not necessarily the case. Trespassers take on some risk of their own when they unlawfully enter onto another’s premises, and that always presents a potential defense.
All that being said, if you are at odds with your mother-in-law and she comes over for Christmas dinner, you probably don’t want to consider her a trespasser. It would be best to treat her as a family member, and not even think about the categories of visitor we’ve just gone through. Just focus on making certain that your home is safe and you’ve done your best to minimize the risks for people to get injured.
A Case Example: Grandma Got Ran over by a Reindeer
This wouldn’t be a proper holiday safety examination if we didn’t look at the most famous caper in all of holiday history. I’m obviously talking about the well-known song, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” If you’ve heard it, you know Grandma was not just injured, she was catastrophically killed through the fault of another individual – the one, the only, Santa Claus.
Was Santa being careful, or was he being reckless and negligent? What’s the most likely scenario? Here, we’ve got a man under pressure. He’s got to get all the way around the world, stuff his plump self into little chimneys, and deliver presents to all the children or else face their unbearable disappointment the next morning.
So is he adapting his driving to the visibility of the weather? Is he watching for pedestrians as Grandma comes slipping and sliding across the road after having more than just a little eggnog that night? Did he check to see if his tail lights were out or if that one reindeer’s little red nose was functioning properly? No, he’s thinking ‘let’s get these presents delivered’. I hate to say it, but we are looking at quintessential negligence and Santa’s got to pay for that. And Grandpa’s going to sue those red pants off of Santa to make sure that he does!
A Visit From Santa
On the other side of things, when Santa does finally make it into your home, what kind of visitor would he be – invitee, licensee, or potentially a trespasser? Well, let’s assume you’ve got Christmas decorations up and you’ve set up a tree. This implies you’ve consented to Santa’s coming into your home and delivering gifts. You’ve shown that you are expecting him.
So Santa is not a trespasser, and he is not here on a social visit. He is bringing commerce into your home; he is transacting business. I’d say this elevates him above a licensee to a business invitee. Under those circumstances, you owe Santa the highest responsibility of care.
This means you need to ensure that your rooftop is properly prepared for his sleigh and reindeer to land in the middle of winter, which is no easy task. The next thing to do is examine your chimneys to make certain that they are clean and unobstructed, and that he has safe access to your Christmas tree. Let’s all embrace this responsibility so that Santa can safely visit Yakima homes and delight our children on Christmas morning.
Promote Holiday Safety in the Kitchen
There’s one other topic I want to mention regarding holiday safety. This potential hazard I see every year – people get injured during food preparation. Typically it’s a younger, curious person who comes into the kitchen during the flurry of preparation for all of the festive, delicious food that we eat. Burns, cuts, or other injuries often ensue.
In fact, when I was growing up, my younger brother reached up onto a stove top and pulled off a pot that was boiling hot. He was burned from head to toe. That doesn’t make for a fun holiday season. Even though there were no personal injury lawsuits that flew on this occasion, there was a whole lot of trauma and injury that resulted.
A simple rule to enforce in the kitchen is to always know where the little people in your life are. Keep them out of the room, or make certain they are supervised as they observe what is going on, well out of harm’s way. The last thing we want to see during the holiday activities is a small child injured, so stay safe and have fun.
Happy Holidays!
As we prepare to gather with friends and family this season, let’s not lose sight of the big picture. Don’t live in fear about getting sued over an injury from an unknown, unsafe corner of your household. Let’s approach this from a place of love for those in our lives and a desire to enjoy our time with them to the maximum potential. Do your best to create a safe space that fosters Christmas cheer, and then enjoy the festivities to their fullest.
Have a wonderful holiday season. All of us at LGP Law wish you a happy, healthy, safe, fun-filled, joyful, blessed season, a Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.