Expert: Katie - 12/27/2006

Question
I just became an expert in the wallpaperhanging and painting category.  My question: A hypothetical example:
Someone emails me about how to remove wallpaper. I tell them to use a "garden" or "bug" sprayer and fill it up with hot water and a wallpaper removal solution and spray the walls to wet the paper.
They use an old garden sprayer that had in lawn chemicals and they get sick...Can I be sued?
or...I tell someone to climb up the ladder and start painting from the top down.....they fall off and hurt themselves and they say I did not tell them to open up or brace the ladder (common sense)...Can I be sued?
thanks for answering these questions...Ed


Answer
Hi Ed,
Great question. I am not a lawyer so I asked one:

http://experts.about.com/q/Personal-Injury-Law-928/sued-AllExperts-Questioners.h...

To summarize Attorney Thomas Hurwitz' answer:

Can you get sued? Yes. Will they win? It depends.

To expand on the "It depends part", I am giving my personal, lay opinion:

Any one who sues you has several things working against them:

1) Our disclaimers:
http://allexperts.com/central/disclaimer.htm
especially the conditions they explicitly agree to when they hit the "I Agree. Send my Question" button on the "Ask a Question" page.
http://www.allexperts.com/user.cgi?m=4&expID=72569&catID=929

As an affiliate of About.com, we are also covered by About's user agreement:
http://about.com//gi/pages/uagree.htm

2) Our track record.
In over 8 years of operation we've never had a single liability problem.

3) The entire New York Times' (they own About.com) Legal Department. I hear they are pretty good with stuff like  this ;).

Hope this helps and
thanks for volunteering,
Katie
AllExperts.com

P.S. Sorry, but I couldn't find someone on our site that practices civil law in Oregon.