RISK MANAGEMENT
generally owes the customer a duty of reasonable care . While certain business relationships increase the duty owed ( such as that owed by an operation transporting passengers in a vehicle ), reasonable care is the most common duty . For the sake of this review , assume the business owes a duty of reasonable care .
Examples of duties owed by business establishments under the concept of reasonable care include repairing / correcting known hazards , warning against intrinsic / unrepairable hazards , and taking steps to avoid preventable hazards .
Consider the example of a restaurant with several sets of steps in the path to the dining area , where a member of the wait staff spilled water , and the plate comes out of the oven very hot . Reasonable care in such a restaurant might include actions such as the person showing the customer
to a table warns of the steps (“ watch your step ”), the waitperson puts up a little yellow sign warning of the wet floor , and the person delivering the food says , “ Be careful , the plate is hot .” These are examples of reasonable care . Let ’ s return to the question of masks and legal liability associated with requiring or not requiring them . For this discussion , the injured party moves from a restaurant ( it ’ s hard to eat while wearing a mask ) to a retail location . From the perspective of reasonable care , are masks necessary to avoid legal liability ?
( Note , this discussion does not and will not address the availability or applicability of liability insurance coverage . Only the concept of legal liability regarding customers in a typical retail setting is addressed in this article .)
EFFECTIVENESS OF MASKS Before exploring the relative differences in legal liability
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