Reply #4: Okay -

[enlightenment]

In the circumstances I described, the child would have to breach the existing fence and gate surrounding the yard in order to access the pool. Should the parents of the child bear more culpability in that case?

Reasonable safety measures are a good thing - but they don't need to be federal. Where I live, home owners who have pools are required to have fencing around the yard OR around the pool, and self-locking gates on all the fencing.

If someone has children, the reasonable thing to do is put fencing around the pool, as well - but why should the neighbor who does not have children be required to do that? If a child gets into the neighbor's fenced and gated yard, they didn't do it in the blink of an eye - the failure to supervise falls on the parents, not the neighbor, and that's the way the state sees it. The neighbor made reasonable measures - fencing the yard, installing self-locking gates. They would not be prosecuted under those conditions. Neither would the parents . . . when, in my opinion, they bear far more responsibility.



edited because my 's' key is behaving badly.