Boat U.S. - January 2008 - (Page 48) seaworthy Damage avoiDance Company’s Coming — Understanding Your Legal Liability to Guests When a guest steps aboard, the typical boat owner is more likely to be thinking more about having lunch or getting underway than worrying about his legal duties and responsibilities as “Master” of the vessel. But if that guest were to be injured, you can bet the boat owner would quickly ponder what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the injury and, heaven forbid, whether he might be liable. The question of liability is both simple and complex, steeped in more than 3,000 years of maritime legal principles dating back to the Phoenicians. Admiralty law, like land-based legal concepts, starts with the premise that a property owner owes his invited guest a duty to exercise ordinary or “reasonable care” for the safety of the guest. Deciding just what constitutes reasonable care can be especially complicated while on a boat, docking a boat, and getting on and off a boat that is bobbing, slippery and filled with obstructions. It has a great deal to do with the experience of the 48 BoatU.S. Magazine January 2007 boat owner and the boating experience of the passenger and whether the boat owner had or should have had knowledge or notice of some dangerous condition. Additionally, it may depend on whether the owner knew or should have known his guest was unaware of or unfamiliar with the condition. It also has to do with whether the boat owner knows of some physical limitation of the passenger, such as prior back problems, the inability to grip, balance or coordination problems, inability to adjust to light or dark quickly, etc. The duty to exercise reasonable care is rooted in the duty to provide a reasonably safe boat for the invited guest. This does not require that the boat be accident proof. Under the law, the applicable standard of care requires the boat owner to provide a boat that is reasonably safe, not one that is absolutely safe. A guest also has some responsibility — a duty to exercise care for his or her own safety. A guest cannot simply walk blindly about the boat. But reasonable care does mean that you may be held accountable if you fail to warn a guest, for example, about a ladder you know is unstable. In one actual claim, the skipper invited a female acquaintance to come by and inspect the aging sportfisherman he’d been fixing up for two years. Like most boats that are being restored from the keel up, the old boat was loaded with half-finished projects — wiring, cabinetry, engines, etc. The woman arrived while he was in the engine room puttering with the wiring. After a quick “yoo-hoo,” she started down into the main salon, but fell when the ladder slipped out from an unsecured fitting. She wound up in the engine compartment only a few inches from the skipper. The woman’s injuries were neither serious nor permanent, but the skipper knew of the hazard and failed to warn his guest, which meant that he might well have been liable if the case had gone to court. What about a clearly visible hazard such as an open hatch? The law calls this “open and obvious” danger, but courts have had
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