CG Rules - New Trends?

wnjj wrote:

Lantley wrote:
That sounds good on the surface until lawyers get involved. Ultimately the CG is responsible for everyone in the park.
Regardless of how,smart,responsible,careless,clumsy or daring the guest are the CG is holding the liability bag.

That may be a bit of an overstatement. Is the CG responsible if I slip on the steps of my RV? How about if I back over another person? Should they have made a rule about no backing without a flagger? I think the standards for the CG are "reasonable" and "not negligent".

Most of these "there could be a lawsuit" claims are just fear mongering (not necessarily by you, Lantley). Yeah, I'm sure lawsuits have happened. They happen for all kinds of legitimate and illegitimate reasons. It really comes down to whether the CG was actually encouraging something dangerous, rather than not forbidding everything that may be dangerous. That is (and always will be) subjective and unfortunately the further down this slippery slope we slide the more difficult it is to ever come back. Agreeing with stupid policies just moves the bar for everyone so when the next lawsuit happens the lawyers point at the other campground as a "better example" in an effort to win their case. So much for progress...

The lawsuit-fearing have every right to their policies. I just hope the public decides with their wallets not to encourage that kind of thinking.

With all due respect, you have no idea how litigious the public has become. There was a thread here a few months ago about someone who wanted to hold the park liable because they backed into a tree. The best way to avoid a lawsuit is to avoid injuries. On some level, I really can't blame people. To keep it within the realm of this discussion, if your child suffered a severe brain injury in a bicycle accident in an RV park and you were facing a lifetime of expenses you couldn't pay you too would leave no stone unturned in finding a way to cover those expenses. If your lawyer could convince our insurance carrier that we should have had more rules, policies and warnings about the dangers of bicycling on the park's property, the odds are the insurance company is going to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid the possibility of being found liable for 10 times that amount in a courtroom. Jurors are people too, and they have a hard time looking past a child totally dependent of 24 hour care to see a child who took his chances and lost. It really doesn't matter to the insurance company since they have the ability to raise rates, both at the individual park and across the board to recoup any settlement. If a park gets unlucky a couple of times, they may be forced out of business because they may end up with a loss record that is uninsurable at any price. Antagonizing a tiny fraction of their potential guests is a small price to pay.