If I’m Injured While Using a Tanning Bed, Who is Liable?

May 13, 2019

Summer is just around the corner and you may be thinking about getting a head start on your summer tan. If you’d rather forego the traditional methods of direct sun exposure for a tanning bed, and if you don’t have a tanning bed in your home, a salon is the next best choice. Visiting the tanning salon just a few times a week will put you well on your way to an enviable tan.

But what if your plan comes screeching to a halt because you’re injured at a tanning salon? If you are wondering if the owners of the establishment bear some responsibility for your injury, the personal injury attorneys at Hensley Legal Group can provide some answers to your burning questions.

Taking Risks, Implicitly or Explicitly

When you go to an amusement park, you accept the implicit risk of some of the negative side-effects of amusement park rides, namely motion sickness.

Implicit risk here means the intent of the rides—unless explicitly stated—is not to give you the undesirable side-effects they may produce. They’re merely byproducts of using the mechanisms.

However, when it comes to tanning beds, you have to think more of explicit risk. Explicit risk means that an activity outright causes harm, but a participant may choose to do that activity anyway.

Tanning involves directly taking in ultraviolet radiation. An obvious risk of this practice, then, is incurring any form of skin cancer. In fact, there is a direct link between tanning beds and skin cancer, including melanoma and nonmelanoma. Explicit risk applies to tanning beds because any time you choose to use a tanning bed, you’re also choosing to risk harm to yourself.

Because you accepted the explicit risks of using a tanning bed, proving a premises liability claim from a cancer diagnosis would be difficult.

Premises Liability and Negligence

There are very few instances within a tanning salon wherein the owner of the salon could be held liable outside of simple slip-and-fall incidents caused by easily preventable circumstances.

That being the case, any dangerous situation the owner of the establishment both knew about and did nothing or too little to prevent can be grounds for premises liability if your injury happened because of it. At the end of the day, premises liability is about negligence.

If the salon owner knew about the tanning bed malfunction that led to your injury, but didn’t do anything to fix it, then their negligence could cause them to become liable. However, in the case of design flaws, the liability could also fall on the bed manufacturers. Every scenario is different, and an experienced personal injury attorney can help determine whether or not you have grounds for a premises liability case.

Help from an Indiana Personal Injury Lawyer

You shouldn’t have to worry about undue injury while you’re getting a summer tan. If you or someone you know has been injured at a tanning salon because of someone else’s negligence, Hensley Legal group may be able to help. Call us today or contact us online for a free conversation about your claim. Our Indiana premises liability lawyers are here to help.