My wife and I recently scheduled a summer trip to the Northwood’s for our family. We are renting a cabin on a lake, near Minocqua, for a week in August. We spent hours looking at countless resorts and all their offerings, and finally found one that should be just perfect for the kids and us. We’ve rented a log style cabin with a beautiful porch that overlooks the lake. The resort has an awesome looking swimming beach, with a nice gradual slope into the water, where our kids are likely to spend the majority of their time while we’re up there.
We’ve sent in our deposit for the cabin, and are now just sitting back anxiously looking forward to our trip. But just today, I received something I found a bit odd. I received an e-mail from the resort owner that politely asked me to “sign the attached waiver and fax it back” to him. The waiver is written in typical “lawyer-speak”, and has a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo in it. Its basic message is that the resort offers many activities, including swimming, boating, fishing, and various sports activities, and that there are “significant risks” associated with such activities. I am being asked to sign the waiver to indemnify the resort from all liability in the event one of the members of my family gets hurt doing one of these “risky” activities.
My goodness!! Is this really what our society has come to? We need to sign waivers to stay at a resort for vacation? Has self-entitlement in America reached the stage where we have to sign disclaimers to protect each other from lawsuits related to swimming, running and playing? I guess it has, and in my opinion, that’s just plain sad.
Well, I went ahead and signed the waiver and faxed it off. I sure hope we don’t need to sign a waiver to eat pancakes at Paul Bunyan’s restaurant while we’re up there.
G’Night G’Town!
Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers. ~Erik Pepke
