Why liability waivers are worthless

When you sign your kid up for sports, you’re probably
expecting to see that little piece of paper that says you
agree not to sue if your child is accidentally
hurt. It turns out those pieces of paper are pretty much
worthless.

Tom Rayfield and his wife found out first hand after their
teenage son and a group of his friends decided they wanted
to go to Sky High Sports in Bellevue.

“When you’re a busy working mom and your teenage son puts
a piece of paper in front of you and says ‘Sign this so I
can go to the trampoline park’ […] She just signed the
paper thinking in essence, that it was a permission slip,”
says Rayfield.

What started as a pretty routine outing turned into a trip
to the emergency room. Rayfield’s son had a very hard
landing on
his left foot. He says the 16-year-old had to
undergo a couple of surgeries to deal with fractures and a
dislocation in his ankle.

At first, Rayfield says, he wasn’t looking to sue, but he
happened to have a friend who was an attorney. When
Rayfield mentioned the accident to his friend, attorney
Sim Osborne informed him that parents cannot sign away the
rights of minors.

“And that’s a smart guy, that’s a guy that graduated from
Whitman College, and he had no idea,” says Osborne.

The waiver they had signed falls under a 1992 decision by
the Washington State Supreme Court that rejected a release
signed by the mother of a 12-year-old boy who was hurt
during a skiing accident.

“You cannot waive a minor’s rights before something
happens to them because only a court can do that,”
Osborne says.

Rayfield is not the first client to come in thinking they
had signed away the right to sue. Osborne says he has
seen a lot of clients who initially come in asking for
referral to a bankruptcy attorney to deal with the medical
bills after their child is hurt. In several of those
cases he has been able to sue successfully, despite the
existence of a liability waiver.

Even though the precedent invalidating waivers dates back
at least 20 years, they’re still required at schools,
city sports teams, and recreation areas. Osborne says
they
do it because they can.

“They don’t let your children play unless you sign the
waiver, usually, but that doesn’t mean that it’s
enforceable,” says Osborne.

There is no law prohibiting them from asking you to sign a
waiver. So, the next time you are asked to release
someone from liability, Osborn says, go ahead. Just
remember if your child does wind up getting hurt, you
still have a right to sue on their behalf.