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If you are trying to have a proper insurance policy for your home, you will have to check a few things before you get the policy. Your insurance claim might get affected by many factors, for which you might not get an amount per your expectation. You might not get your expected insurance premium, or worse, you might not be able to even land an insurance policy for your home. Among these factors, attractive nuisances can be one that might endanger your home, as well as the insurance policy for your home.
If you have any attractive nuisances on your property or inside the boundary of your home, the problems you will face are manifold. You will have to go through laws regarding attractive nuisances and make sure to take care of those nuisances for people’s safety. Otherwise, you will have to be liable for the problems caused by the attractive nuisances of your property. Moreover, it will be really hard to have a proper insurance policy for your home, and many insurance companies might even refuse to have an insurance deal with you. The ones that might agree to let you have an insurance policy will make you pay much higher insurance premium rates than usual.
What are Attractive Nuisances
Attractive nuisances can be anything. They can be a certain object or a structure on your property that might attract people, especially children, and might have the chance to cause them any kind of harm. Swimming pools can be among the most common examples of attractive nuisances, as children can easily fall into a swimming pool when no one’s watching and drown, which can cause serious harm to them. It can be fatal too. Other stuff such as trampolines, low roofs, etc., can also attract children and lure them into some kind of danger. As a result, these can also be labeled as attractive nuisances.
Attractive nuisances can cause a lot of problems, and it is a wise decision to get rid of them from your property if that seems to be an option. But if you think you really need to have a swimming pool or a fountain, or other kinds of nuisances on your property, then you need to take measures so that no one has the chance to get hurt by them. And the measures are needed to be taken as your state law demands it from you.
If you go through the necessary steps and safeguard people from getting in contact with attractive nuisances, then you will be able to avoid the liabilities that come your way. Also, then you will be able to have a proper insurance policy for your home, as you can show the insurance companies that you have taken steps to keep people safe from the attractive nuisances, there’s no chance of anyone getting hurt.
Florida’s Attractive Nuisance Law
As stated earlier, your state’s law will hold you liable for the attractive nuisances you have on your home property, and the law also requires you to properly take care of the nuisances so that no one gets harm due to them. If anyone gets harmed because of attractive nuisances, you will be held liable for that. Different states have different laws regarding this. The state of Florida also has its own law for attractive nuisances.
Florida courts have weighed on some specific items that will be considered attractive nuisances. If a child is attracted onto your property by an instrumentality, a machine, or an appliance, swimming pool, or something else that is dangerous to them, but because of their young age they are unable to understand the danger, then that will be known as the attractive nuisances.
Florida Statute 823.08 has specifically indicated the following discarded or abandoned items as attractive nuisances to children:
- Iceboxes
- Refrigerators
- Deep-freeze lockers
- Clothes washes
- Clothes drivers
- Similar airtight units from which the doors have not been removed yet
However, the nuisances are not limited to this list. Swimming pools are considered one of the most common attractive nuisances in Florida, which is why legislators have required homeowners to install particular protections, per Florida Statute 515.27 for residential pool owners.
Other potential attractive nuisances might include lawn tractors, or trampolines, or unattended power tools, fountains, etc., that are left open and visible in the property owner’s yard.
The attractive nuisance law of Florida has placed a duty on the homeowners to protect the children against these nuisances. The homeowners are legally required to guard children against them.
Deciding Factors to be Held Liable
In order to be held liable for attractive nuisances under Florida’s attractive nuisance law, there are some deciding factors. They are-
- Whether the specific item was in a place where the homeowner knows or should have known children were likely to reach it
- Whether the specific item attracted the injured child onto the homeowner’s property
- Whether the specific item bears an unreasonable risk of serious injuries or death to children and the homeowner knew or should have known about it
- Whether the child did not realize the danger of the specific item because of their young age
- Whether the benefit of the item was small compared to the risks to children
- Whether the property owner did not take reasonable steps to protect the children or remove the danger directly
These factors will decide if a person will be liable or not due to problems caused by attractive nuisances.
Final Words
If you have any kind of attractive nuisances on your property, you must make sure that you have taken proper precautions to safeguard little children from it. Otherwise, you’ll be held liable for any kind of injury caused by those items.
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