PANAMA CITY BEACH — The most recent proposal put forth by Bay County Commission Chairman Guy Tunnell would have put two lifeguards on duty at the County Pier during peak hours in the peak tourist season.
It would have cost the county $65,000 a year and, perhaps, increased its legal liability, a big issue for the three commissioners who voted against Tunnell’s proposal.
Attorney Zach Taylor with the Panama City firm Manuel and Thompson, said the liability issue is real. If the county does nothing, it has no liability. Once it hires lifeguards, it has a responsibility that it otherwise wouldn’t have, Taylor said.
Although awards in a civil lawsuit against a county are capped at $200,000 unless the Legislature approves more, Taylor said if the county wants to keep its legal liability to a minimum, it’s best for it not to get into the lifeguarding business.
Local attorney Wes Pittman agreed the county’s liability would increase with the hiring of lifeguards, but he said local governments that don’t provide lifeguards are shirking responsibility.
“The absurdity is this: We expect government to provide some services to us, such as safety,” Pittman said.
Pittman said county sheriff’s deputies are a good analogy; if the county is serious about minimizing liabilities, it could fire all deputies, but they serve a purpose too important to ignore.
“So does the government throw up its hands and say we’re not going to provide safety?” Pittman said.
Joe McManus, adviser and former president for the Southeast region of the United States Lifesaving Association (USLA), was skeptical of the liability argument, “especially since the surrounding areas have so successfully been able to implement lifeguard programs.”
Walton and Okaloosa counties use bed-tax revenue to fund lifeguard programs. Fewer people have drowned in both counties in recent years than in Bay County, according to the Florida Department of Health.
Bay County’s Tourist Development Council (TDC), the organization that collects and spends bed-tax revenue, brought in more than $1 million beyond its projection last year, Tunnell said. But when TDC members were deciding how to spend all that extra dough, the idea of hiring lifeguards never came up.
McManus and the USLA would like to see more lifeguards on Panama City Beach, not just because lifeguards are trained to rescue swimmers in trouble, but because their primary activity is to prevent swimmers from getting into trouble in the first place. They’re trained to spot a rip current that an average tourist from Kentucky wouldn’t see.
He said the liability issue raised by lifeguard opponents is a “red herring.” The county’s immunity from liability is spelled out in Florida Statute 380.276, McManus said, which reads in part:
“Due to the inherent danger of constantly changing surf and other naturally occurring conditions along Florida’s coast, the state, state agencies, local and regional government entities or authorities, and their individual employees and agents, shall not be held liable for any injury or loss of life caused by changing surf and other naturally occurring conditions along coastal areas, whether or not uniform warning and safety flags or notification signs developed by the department are displayed or posted.”
Florida’s 4th District Court of Appeal seems to have interpreted that to mean governments are immune from liability, even in the rare instance when someone drowned in guarded waters, McManus said.
The result of the opinion was the dismissal of a lawsuit in which a child was swept up in a rip current just outside of a guarded area of a beach. It was never appealed.
It’s not an apples-to-apples case, though, because lifeguards were not assigned to guard the area. If that had been the case and the lifeguard on duty was negligent, the government would have been liable, Pittman said.
“If they do hire lifeguards, the lifeguards had better perform appropriately,” he said.
McManus said that opinion, which the appellate court issued in 2011, pretty much stopped lifeguard liability suits statewide.
He believes commissioners wanted to save a few bucks.
“It’s about money,” he said. “You know it and I know it.”
McManus said he’s not aware of any research that suggests publicity of drowning deaths scares visitors away from a tourist destination such as Panama City Beach, so there’s no reason to expect a negative impact on bed-tax revenue.