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can someone come back and sue the shaper in case of personal injury?
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should a shaper put his name anywhere on the board?
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maybe form a corporation that way they can’t come after YOU?
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should shaper sell boards with his name or a DBA??
while you do bring up so good points i would think that back yard shapers probably are friends or on good terms with their customers and if they were sued that would be a shame. i geuss whenever(if) i ever sell a board that i tell the person that there are risks involved in surfing and the board or builder is not responsible
It has happened.
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yes and no. surfing is an inherently dangerous activity. you have no culpability just because someone is injured while riding one of your boards. even if it’s the result of something construction-related (i.e. fins break off and board spins out), the burden of proof on the plaintiff would be very high. they would have to show that their injuries are the direct result of your negligence – nearly impossible, given most reasonable circumstances. i wouldn’t worry. now, if someone is hanging around your shop and cuts their finger off on your band saw…that’s a whole 'nother story.
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should picasso have signed his paintings? hiding your identity for fear of being sued if someone gets hurt on your board is nonsense. if your boards are made so poorly that you don’t want to sign your name to it…fine. but if that’s the case, then please don’t let people ride them.
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good way to limit liability, but probably more trouble than it’s worth. lots of hassles when tax time comes around, aside from the initial hassle of incorporating oneself. not worth it. besides, your homeowners insurance includes personal liability coverage up to $200k. they’ll even pay your legal fees and/or any settlement should someone decide to sue you.
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shaper’s preference…really doesn’t make any difference…at all.
Having looked at some similar stuff for a couple of the businesses I am in, I may have a few useful things to say on the subject.
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Yes they can sue you. Someone can sue anybody on any grounds, even if it’s an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit, and you have to come up with the money to pay the lawyer to defend you…even if the judge throws it out immediately. That’s a fact of life for everybody these days, in this overly litigious world. Don’t worry about it. You are not likely to be a target.
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Unless you have a horrible reputation already, you most definitely should put your name on the boards.What else, really, are you selling other than your skills at making a board . If you are selling direct to the user, rather than through a surf shop, you’re exposed a little more , but that’s about it. A little…
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If you form a corporation, but it was you personally that built the board or it was built by an employee under your supervision, the lawsuit-happy type will sue both the corporation and you - it’s just another name typed on the filing papers. No real win there. And what with the various fees for forming the corporation, annual fees involved with having a corporation like bookkeeping and annual filing fees, corporation taxes and so on…well, the average backyard shaper would be happy to net that kind of money per year.
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Likewise a DBA - it offers you no real liability protection and in some cases ( where I live, at least ) if you do business under your own name you don’t need business licenses and so on, instead you can kinda go under the radar at low cost.
The bottom line is this: what have you got to lose? If you have a wife, kids, and own a lot of property, then it might be worthwhile to look into an umbrella policy for a million bucks, it may be cheaper than incorporating and so on. If not, what can they take away from you if you declare bankruptcy? They can’t take your tools in any event, so think about it that way.
If you’re getting enough boards out the door that the corporate tax advantages are going to make it worth while to incorporate, do that, but by then you are already paying a fair amount for insurances and legal retainers or should be. Look very hard at those tax advantages, as there’s lots of costs for a corporation that are not there for a sole proprietorship.
The liability issue is really a small one, and someone would have an awfully hard time proving they had been damaged - surfing is classified as ‘inherently dangerous’ to begin with in some legal precedents- so in order to collect from you they would have to prove your boards were much worse than the general run of surfboards, that they had not damaged it or weakened it in use before the event… be tough to do. Especially if the board was a custom order…
Generally, I have never heard of anybody being sued over a bad board and personal injury. And the price of a board is low enough still that suing for a broken board is small claims court stuff. Make a disclaimer sales slip up, so that your liability is limited to the price of the board and some other gobbledegook, you should be fine.
The thing is, lawsuits go for whoever has the deepest pockets, and your basic backyard guy hasn’t got 'em. Many of the lawyers who do these cases do it on a contingency fee basis: they are in it for a percentage, so that they will not proceed with a lawsuit if it doesn’t look like they are gonna get paid. Somebody sues me for ten million dollars and wins, good luck finding it.
It’s far more likely that if somebody hurts themself surfing, they will go after the municipality the beach is in, 'cos they do have deep pockets and major liability insurance into the millions of dollars.
hope that’s of use
doc…
What have you got that they can sue you for? PI attorneys don’t take cases where there is no money to be had. Millionaire? Then you should already have a “umbrella” policy to protect you.
I remember back in the late 80’s or was it the early 90’s, a friend was shaping for a now defunct glass shop in San Diego called Island Scene. A kid was out surfing in Imperial beach and got his leash tangled with a loose lobster trap buoy and drowned. The lawyers representing his parents sued anybody that they could think of that was remotely connected to the incident. The City of IB, the lifeguards, the sheriffs, the paramedics, the lobster fisherman, ect. They sued the leash company, the wetsuit company and the surfboard manufacturer Island Scene. Island Scene like many other manufacturers who where trying to get around having to pay employee taxes had all their workers be subcontractors. Well, because all their workers where technically self employed, all those guys got sued too. From the shaper to the polisher. They each had to hire their own lawyers to defend themselves. One by one the lawsuit against each one of them where dismissed in court. But for guy’s who didn’t make much money for a living, having to hire a lawyer was big financial hit.
arn’t you garunteed a lawyer even for non criminal cases?i am try to remember the name of the case.
Actually, no, that’s only in criminal cases. Some related stuff, such as child custody or child welfare cases and similar, those you may ‘have an attorney appointed if you cannot afford one’… I used to date a lawyerette who did a lot of that stuff.
There may be exceptions in some states, but
The only good news is that if a plaintiff is going after somebody in a civil suit , the lawyer involved is doing it either for a percentage of the award or for straight pay. And if it’s a really marginal lawsuit, like a surfboard lawsuit, the attorney isn’t gonna do it for a percentage. The plaintiff ( the bozo that’s suing you ) has to come up with the lawyer’s fees, just like you do.
And if the suit is dismissed or the plaintiff loses, there are mechanisms/laws in some states to recover attorney’s fees and court costs. Best to put a wee bit on that into the sales slip fine print too.
Some interesting bits - www.findlaw.com
hope that’s of use
doc…
I heard about some kind of personal injury litigation with Local Motion back when Ronnie Burns was still around. My understanding was a kid in Florida got his eye poked by the nose of his board and the parents brought in the lawyers. Don’t know the final out come though.
Hasn’t anybody else heard of this or even know the outcome?
[=1][=Black][ 2] “besides, your homeowners insurance includes personal liability coverage up to $200k. they’ll even pay your legal fees and/or any settlement should someone decide to sue you.”[/][/] [/]
I think most homeowner policies have a clause specifically prohibiting commercial enterprise from the home. Manufacturing and selling boards might be something they’d use against you.
Escape clauses might be something to consider in the event of a fire also… there is usually something in the policy about hazardous materials… it might apply to anybody making boards at home.
I remember at one time a manufacturer (Harbour?) had a little disclaimer notice laminated under the glass of all his boards.
Even that doesn’t mean somebody somewhere can’t sue.
Hmm, I worked at Island Scene when this event happened. The kid was surfing out at O.B. right after a rain storm in polluted waters. He got cut by a fin, the cut got severely infected, and the parents sued. If my memory serves me correctely, they sued Steve Seebold the shaper, and Island Scene the glasser. The alleged infraction was a defective glass-on fin, more specifically the trailing edge was “too sharp”. This lawsuit went on and on and on for many months before finally being dropped. Now for the facts checking, I was never a 1099 employee at Island Scene, if I was, then I’m pretty upset about the payroll deductions. As far as the scruples of the owner, there’s plenty of story to be told if needed. Let’s just say that paychecks were bouncing as he travelled around the world. When the place shut down, a side effect of the notorious “air blower blanks” that Clark was refusing to admit to, us employess got stiffed on final paychecks. I even took the owner to small claims court and won a settlement. That jerk owner never even showed up. The judgement has long expired, but my memory has not. If your out there Mr. Luis Gammarra, you still owe me $1500. I’m in the phone book in Encinitas, you can look me up when you’re ready to pay up.
I guess it looks like the backyard guy does have liability issues just like the big guys, however as a fellow b’yarder I’m not worried. The odds appear to be in our favor.
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I think most homeowner policies have a clause specifically prohibiting commercial enterprise from the home. Manufacturing and selling boards might be something they’d use against you.
they do, but (at least in florida) it wouldn’t stand up to something that was not intended as a profitable venture, but rather as a hobby. if you have no commercial license, and don’t generate profits from making surfboards such that you’d have tax responsibilities resulting from it, then i wouldn’t worry. don’t get me wrong…the insurance company could try and make an issue out of it…it just wouldn’t stand up.
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Escape clauses might be something to consider in the event of a fire also… there is usually something in the policy about hazardous materials… it might apply to anybody making boards at home.
this really applies only to excessive risk resulting from anything abnormal. hobby craftsman have things like acetone, lacquer, and other flammables…not uncommon to be stored in someone’s home. i do, however, recall a case awhile back where a guy was storing an obscene amount of gasoline in his garage for personal use. his house blew up. oops. insurance paid nothing because the damage resulted from the excessive/abnormal risk brought on by the gasoline. to the contrary…a little acetone…ain’t no thang.
I own a commercial insurance agency…your more than likely not going to get a policy if your shop is set up like most shapers shops I have seen. If you do, it’s going to be expensive and your going to struggle to make the payments. Doc hit the nail on the head. You can run and LLC like a sole prop. and still get protection. Much easier than a Corp. Your will never find a way around a sharp attorney, but unlikely to get sued on surfboard building. It can happen, but …You could die in a car wreck tomorrow or get eaten by a shark as well.
Bill Minard told me the story along time ago. Maybe I got the facts confused. It 's been a while. I’m pretty sure the story I got from Bill is he got sued and the kid was at IB and he drowned. I vaguely remember that after I S tanked there was another shop that took over the building or was near the same location. Maybe it was that one. Could be 2 similar stories. As far as getting burned on a pay check, yeah I’ve had that happen with a few ex-employers. It’s a real piss-off when they pull that kind of shit.
…cause of that, a lot of boards now have the tip of the nose straight (bigger than the eyes)…not “needle” tip…to prevent eyes injuries…