As a health club owner, if you stay in this business long enough, eventually you will need to confront the very real probability that one or more of your members will be injured at your club. Sometimes an injury is the result of negligence on the part of the club. Equipment cables fail; entrances become slippery after rain or snow storms; exercise balls burst, and kids in your childcare put their fingers into things they shouldn’t. Whether you knew of a hazardous condition or not, you ultimately may be responsible for an injury to a member. You do the best you can to create a safe workout environment, but sometimes accidents happen and the claim can ultimately be attributed to something the club could have done to prevent the injury.
That is why you buy liability insurance. However, more often than not, most injuries that occur at health clubs are the result of what we affectionately refer to as “member malfunction.” In other words, the incident is clearly (at least from our perspective) attributable to the member’s own negligence.
The problem with our legal system, and our society in general, is that there will always be certain individuals who have a hard time accepting responsibility for their own actions. You’ve probably already seen a member who was thrown from a treadmill or who tripped over a step in group exercise. You may have witnessed a member lose control during a squat or someone passing out from overexertion. Unfortunately, some of these members are going to look to the club for payment of their medical bills; lost wages, and pain and suffering, regardless of who was at fault. We not only have to fight-off the plaintiff attorneys, who will gladly take any case involving a health club injury, but we also have to deal with the medical community that often encourages patients to seek reimbursement for their injury from the health club; again, regardless of fault.
So what do you do when a member comes to you with medical bills related to their mishap on the treadmill? The member may make mention that their doctor told them to give the bills to you and you would know what to do with them…Or, maybe they will mention that they spoke to an attorney and say “I really don’t want to sue the club, and if you pay my bills and give me a few hundred dollars for the five days I was off work, I won’t pursue anything.” The member may even offer a solution, such as, “Just give me, my wife and my cousin a free lifetime membership and I won’t hire an attorney.” Whatever their motives are, you are now in a position to respond to a request that you truthfully believe borders on extortion.
As business owners, we often find ourselves making unpleasant decisions about how we run our club. We pay contractors for shoddy workmanship; we swallow bad debt on membership contracts that we have every right to collect and occasionally, we make deals with these accountability deprived members. Every case and situation is different and I don’t suggest that you “settle” with the member every time they come to you with medical bills. However, there are some things you can offer that may diffuse a potential lawsuit. You may want to tell the member, “We are sorry about your injury, but unless there was a malfunction with the equipment or if there was something that the club did to cause the injury, we can not be in a position to pay for these medical bills. However, what we can do is provide you with a free personal training session or we can add three free months to your membership agreement.”
By offering a service to the member that has little or no effect on your expenses, you may be able to diffuse the situation and cause a potential claim to go away. Keep in mind that even frivolous claims add up and go against your loss-ratio or claim experience. The member may still pursue legal action, but by trying to reasonably work something out with them, you will likely reduce the number of claims which will ultimately translate into lower insurance costs.
Ken Reinig is the President of Association Insurance Group, Inc. He can be contacted at 877.521.9930, or by email atken@clubinsurance.com, or visit www.clubinsurance.com.
