Myrtle Beach Hotel Pays Settlement To Family Of Child Who Suffered Chemical Burns In Hotel Swimming Pool

It’s fun to daydream about having a swimming pool in your backyard, but maintaining one is as much work for you as swimming in it is for your kids.  You must test your pool water every day to measure the levels of chlorine and acid; every so often, you must shock your pool by giving it a mega dose of pool chemicals.  From a distance, a chlorinated pool smells like refreshing summer fun, but it is no fun to be up close and personal with high concentrations of chlorine.  Pool chlorine is, for all practical purposes, bleach; it kills germs, but it is also corrosive.  It is the reason that you don’t get a brain-eating amoeba from a swimming pool, but they are also the reason that your eyes get red after a long swim and why your hair color, natural or dyed, gets lighter after frequent pool swimming.  You can tell when a pool does not have enough chlorine because it looks slimy with algae, but you usually don’t know that it has too much until you start swimming and feel the chemicals irritating your skin.  A little bit too much chlorine is just uncomfortable, but chlorine levels that are much too high can cause injury.  A Columbia premises liability lawyer can help you if you have suffered injuries due to an improperly chlorinated swimming pool on someone else’s property.

Hotel Employees Over-Chlorinated Pool and Falsified Reports of Chlorine Levels

In 2020 Ashtyn Douglas was three years old, and he traveled with his family from their home in North Carolina to Myrtle Beach.  They stayed at the Caribbean Resort hotel, which has a swimming pool with a lazy river.  After Ashtyn swam in the pool, he complained that he had a burning feeling on his skin, and his buttocks and thighs appeared irritated.  The irritation got worse, until blisters appeared on his skin, and his parents took him to the hospital where he spent seven days in the burn unit; doctors diagnosed him with chemical burns from the dangerously high levels of chlorine in the pool.  His recovery at home was just as painful, as his mother had to clean the wounds and change the dressings several times per day.

Ashtyn’s family sued the hotel for premises liability, and the case went to trial.  During the trial, hotel employees testified that they falsified the reports about the pool chemicals; supervisors knew about the falsified reports but did not seem concerned that the pool chemicals might cause injury.  Eventually, the defendants paid the family a $26 million settlement.  Today, Ashtyn is seven years old and still has scars from the chemical burn injuries.

Let Us Help You Today

The premises liability lawyers at the Stanley Law Group can help you if you were injured in a preventable accident at a hotel swimming pool.  Contact The Stanley Law Group in Columbia, South Carolina or call (803)799-4700 for a free initial consultation.

Source:

usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/31/myrtle-beach-caribbean-resort-chlorine-burn-settlement/72420562007/