Forever Isn't Long Enough: Storing Liability Waivers

The program has ended. The kids have gone home. Thanks to your planning and safety efforts, it was another successful season with no injuries. What do you do with those liability waivers? Can you toss them?

One might think that if no injury has occurred at the conclusion of the individual’s participation, the business would be safe in discarding the waiver at that point.  This is not the case because many injuries are not reported at the time of occurrence. The participant may not realize an injury has occurred, may not realize the seriousness of an injury until a later date, or has not yet decided to file suit against the provider. So do not discard a stack of waivers simply because you think no injury has occurred.

Doyice and Mary Cotten, Waivers and Releases of Liability 135-137 (Sport Risk Consulting, 2016).

Claims for injuries are subject to statutes of limitations: After a certain period of time, an injured party can't sue you anymore. The challenge is that a claim might be filed within the statute of limitations, but your business might not be notified of the claim until later. Also, different states have different limitations periods, which are often extended for minors. For example, a state might impose a two or three year limit on personal injury suits, but that two year timer might only begin when a minor turns 18. This means your business could be sued a decade after an injury that you never knew about. To avoid confusion, the safest bet is retaining your waivers. 

If one has taken the trouble to use waivers, the comparative effort to retain them is minimal. The increased peace of mind should be worth the extra effort. The thing one must avoid is to need a waiver and no longer have it. Being able to access a needed waiver would outweigh any inconvenience.

Id.

Of course, keeping waivers forever is probably too long. The best practice is to keep your waivers for the applicable statute of limitations period in your jurisdiction, and perhaps a few years beyond that just in case a claim is brought under a different statute of limitations that's longer. For minor campers, you should keep the waivers until the camper turns 18 + the statute of limitations.