Quote Originally Posted by BBatesokc View Post
That has ZERO to do with the topic. I guess in that scenario I could sue you for being clueless about the law...... but..... In this case, we are talking about being shielded from a lawsuit/liability/judgement due to a waiver. I simply pointed out that the waiver is meaningless if any negligence can be found.

The simple fact they are obviously going to allege negligence means its going to get expensive fast to try and defend the lawsuit (regardless of the precious waiver).

Oklahoma law does not allow a business to avoid liability simply because they have customers sign a waiver. Most personal injury and/or product liability lawyers will tell you a waiver is pretty useless other than to point out the obvious - what you're doing as a customer and offering as a business is dangerous.

I've used the example of the mechanical bulls that used to be in tons of bars. I use that example because I know a lawyer that won a couple of large verdicts and one settlement over those bulls. And in EVERY case the person hurt signed a waiver.
One of the lawyer types like Midtowner can correct me, but I'm reasonably sure that business can't generally exculpate their own negligence - although I think that may be an exclusion against exculpating gross negligence. Ordinary negligence is more likely to get waved off, I think. It's one thing if you get hurt doing something dangerous, simply by virtue of the fact that its dangerous, but its another thing if the proximate cause of the injury was the failure of the other guy to do something routine he should have done. Then you get into industry standards and reasonable man tests and stuff like that.

Now, sometimes, to get around all that, some liability releases will also include liquidated damages clauses that try to say, in effect, "Okay, even if we screw up, and some court SAYS we screwed up, you agree in advance as part of the consideration for the service that any damages arising from such screw up are limited to $50" or some other token amount.