As a business owner, you may be planning on how and when to reopen your business during these troubled times. Besides looking out for the necessary precautions and reopening guides to follow, we share more on how to use a liability waiver to protect your own business as you return to work.
What Are Liability Waivers?
A liability waiver helps to limit the amount of damages or claims that your business contractor or visitor can pursue in a later lawsuit. This is an agreement that needs to be signed by your contractor or visitor before any work can proceed.
What Do I Need to Take Note Of?
- Ensure that the waiver section stands out in your document. If it is a long document, state at the start that this document includes a liability waiver. Consider using a larger or bolder font size for the liability waiver to ensure that it stands out visually too.
- Ensure that the terms are clear, unambiguous, reasonable, and fair to both parties. If the terms of the waiver are found to be crafted in a manner to obtain waiver liability for certain, intentional conduct, then the waiver will could be unenforceable.
- Provide a valid consideration in your agreement. The waiver is binding only if both parties of the contract are giving up something of value.
- The waiver must be clear enough for an ordinary person to understand. This ensures that customers will know what rights they have agreed to give up by signing the waiver.
- Conduct due diligence on laws of waiver that apply in your state as they may vary depending on where you are at.
- Posting a waiver in your business without a signature from the other party renders the waiver ineffective.
- If courts find that the liability waiver goes against the public policy for public protection, then the liability waiver may be refused by courts as well.
How Can This Help My Business?
A liability waiver can help to mitigate the level of risk your business faces during reopening. If the agreement has been drafted properly, it can help to increase protection for your business from future lawsuits which may have arisen from another’s negligence.
How to Obtain A Liability Waiver?
Depending on your business, it may require visitors to sign them at the door. While this may be something feasible to implement now due to crowd control, it might not be as effective when pandemic precautionary measures are lifted. A more convenient alternative would be the use of electronic waivers.
An electronic waiver would allow you to send your customers the waiver online through their computer, smartphone, or tablet. To speed up your business process, this waiver could also be sent to your customers in advance (if applicable).
Using QR codes is another great way to load the waiver form. Using WaiverFile, you can generate a QR code that can be scanned easily on most modern smartphones. Scan the code and the form appears and your customer can complete it on their own device. Learn how to setup QR codes with WaiverFile.
If you are interested in electronic waivers, have a chat with us at WaiverFile today for more information!