This is Part 2 of a series of posts where we will be sharing transcripts from our “Looking Forward” webinar featuring Legalease With the Ladies- powered by HopSkip.
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Any value in requiring attendees to sign a waiver?
Lisa Sommer Devlin: Let me jump in on that one first. There’s potential value, but the thing that you need to understand is that waivers are extremely difficult to enforce. The law on preinjury waivers varies from state to state, which also makes it more complicated if you’re having attendees coming from all over.
But in general with something of this nature or something that is an illness that someone could get as a result of being at your event, it’s probably going to be very, very unlikely that you’re going to be able to enforce that waiver now. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it? Not necessarily, because sometimes just the fact that somebody has signed a waiver is enough to deter a claim. As Barbara said, anybody can see you anytime, for any reason, good or bad, and sometimes if they have agreed in advance that they aren’t going to make a claim, it’s enough to deter them.
The other thing you want to think about is the optics. Do you really want to have people coming either into your hotel or into your event to have to sign a document that says, “hey for coming here, you might get this disease and drop dead?”
So, you might not want to approach it that way. I think the more positive approach is requiring things like masks, distancing and vaccines. Barbara, what do you think?