Make Sure Your Property Is Secured
Video Transcript: What is an attractive nuisance? My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am an Oklahoma lawyer with Wirth Law Office, and I want to talk to you about a particular legal concept called attractive nuisance.
And this is something to be cautious of if you’re a property owner. In other words, if you own your own home, if you own land, if you have a business where you own the commercial lot that it sits on, this is something you need to think about. Attractive nuisance is the idea of a potentially dangerous condition on the property that is not readily apparent to children and might attract children onto the property. Now, the modern classic examples of attractive nuisance are two things, trampolines and swimming pools, especially inground swimming pools.
Through a child’s eyes, they both look like fun toys to be played with and a small child will not appreciate the immediate danger of jumping in the pool unsupervised or jumping on the trampoline unsupervised. And then the takeaway from this is if you have a condition like that on your property, for example, you have a trampoline or an inground swimming pool, a child trespasser comes on your property and say they fall on the pool and drown, or they get on the trampoline and launch themselves off and break a leg or break a neck, or they’re injured somehow, you could be sued as the landowner for maintaining that condition on the property and not taking proper precautions. As a preliminary matter, a good safety precaution is if you do have a pool, if you do have a trampoline, make sure it’s secured. In the case of a pool, a good fence is a good idea, and probably something that’s not easily climbed, and if possible, like a privacy fence where it’s not obvious there’s a pool back there.
Trampolines, having it enclosed is good, having it where there is a netting around it that you can close and seal to keep kids off of it are good ideas. Because these are the kind of things that you can get sued over and you can end up being liable for quite a lot of money because of some kind of a condition you have on your property. So for those of you out there who are property owners, this is something to be aware of.
If you do have an injury on your property as a result of one of these conditions, you need a good lawyer right away because, yes, you are potentially liable. And one place that you can find a good personal injury attorney in Tulsa is at makelaweasy.com, and we’ll help you out.
