Swimming Pool Drownings in Pennsylvania: Fencing, Supervision and Attractive Nuisance

Attractive nuisance

Ordinarily a landowner owes very little to a trespasser. The attractive nuisance doctrine changes that for children, where an artificial condition on the land is likely to attract them, they are too young to appreciate the risk, and the burden of eliminating the danger is small compared with the harm.

A swimming pool is the archetypal example. “They should not have been in my yard” is therefore not the complete answer owners expect it to be.

Barriers are the recurring issue

Pennsylvania municipalities generally require pools to be enclosed by a barrier of specified height with self closing and self latching gates, with latches positioned out of a child’s reach.

What we see repeatedly:

• A gate latch that had been broken for months.
• A gate propped open for convenience during a party.
• A barrier with a gap, or with furniture beside it that made climbing easy.
• A pool cover used as a substitute for a fence, which it is not.
• An above ground pool with a ladder left down.

Supervision

At a home, whoever was responsible for the child. At a public or club pool, whether lifeguards were present, adequately trained and adequately numerous for the conditions, and whether the facility followed its own policies.

Drowning is fast and silent, which is why supervision arrangements matter far more than swimming ability.

Equipment and drains

Entrapment by pool and spa drains has caused catastrophic injuries, and federal safety requirements address drain covers and anti entrapment systems. Where a public or commercial pool has non compliant drain covers, that is a specific and provable failing.

Near drownings

A child who survives may have hypoxic brain injury with lifelong consequences, and these are valued as catastrophic injury claims requiring a life care plan. Survival is not the end of the matter, and settling early is how families end up funding decades of care.

What to preserve

Photographs of the barrier, gate, latch and surroundings before anything is repaired. The pool’s maintenance and inspection records for a commercial facility. Staffing and lifeguard certification records. Any prior complaints about the gate or the fence.