You’re on vacation and you get hurt. What should you do? John N. Demas is a personal injury attorney in Sacramento, California, and a founding partner at Demas & Rosenthal, LLP. In this article, he explains what to do.
If someone is hurt on a vacation, I’d say go home. But aside from that, the legal recourse a person has if he has been injured at a resort outside of this country could be different than the recourse he would have if he was hurt at a hotel or resort within the United States.
A lot of what you are able to do in a case like this, involving injury while on vacation, will depend on where it was that were hurt. If you were hurt in a place anywhere outside of the United States, then that right there can complicate things right off the bat for your potential lawsuit.
One thing that could influence your case, specifically, is the hotel or resort at which you were injured. Even if you were at a hotel in Mexico, for instance, a lot of resorts are actually owned by American companies. In cases like that, you may have a bit more legal recourse—because the hotel company falls under American laws—than in cases where you are in a foreign country, staying at a resort owned by a foreign company, when the injury possibly occurred.
So the short answer I would tell people if they are injured while on vacation is that you do not have the same legal rights and legal advantages when you are in a foreign country as you do when you are staying within the United States. That is something to keep in mind.
Of course, you can buy travel insurance that might protect you—but even that depends on where you are going. The Department of State also maintains a website that lists the things you would want to do in case of emergency in various countries around the world. It might be worth having a look at that before you go on a vacation to another place. You will also want to make sure you have an extra copy of your passport and any copies of insurance records—things of that nature—before going on a trip with your family.
But first and foremost people should just be aware that they may not have the same legal rights and recourse options if they are hurt while on vacation in another country as they would in the United States. That’s just something to keep in mind before taking your next trip.
