Exiting The Party – Protecting Your Safety and Well Being.
No one likes to kill a good party, am I right?
The issue is, sometimes parties can get dangerous, especially if there are drugs or alcohol involved.
The difference between you and the guests is this – the event is your workplace. That means, you have an obligation not only to yourself, but your staff (and to your insurance company) to stay safe at that event.
The question is though, how serious must the behaviour be to warrant walking out of an event?
When is it time to walk?
Like any good lawyer, I say that it “all depends on the circumstances”. However, if we look for guidance by SafeWork (or similar regulatory bodies around Australia), they say the following:
“In some circumstances, you have a right to stop or refuse to carry out unsafe work. You have this right if you have reasonable concern of a serious risk to your health and safety.”
There are some circumstances which will be clearly dangerous (ie. misuse of fire). There is of course behaviour that you may choose to turn a blind eye to (you’re not the cops, yeah?). However, you want to give yourself the ability to walk the minute you feel unsafe.
You owe it to yourself and to those around you.
It may not be that you exit the event immediately. You may wish to approach the organisers of the event and inform them of your concerns. This may avert the need to terminate your services mid way through. But when communicating your concerns, you need to be clear – if the behaviour continues, you will have no other option but to leave.
Have terms that allow you to walk.
We recommend making it very clear in your terms and conditions that you have the right to exit the event at any point in time YOU feel that your safety is at risk. You need to make it clear in your terms that it is at YOUR sole discretion, and that it is not whether THEY determine the event has become unsafe. You of course need to be reasonable, but you need to ensure that it is up to you, not them, as to whether you stay or you leave. This will prevent any arguments down the line about whether the risk that was posed was “a reasonable concern of a serious risk”.
You need to also make it clear that by you ceasing work, this does not entitle them to a refund of the monies paid. If you’ve been forced to leave an event due to the actions of someone other than you, you should not be financially responsible – whether in part or in full.
Use Event Law Templates
The good news is that Event Law’s legal templates deal with these scenarios so that you don’t have to go it alone in drafting them. These easy-to-use, affordable legal templates have been drafted by us, but can be customised by you with our help. These templates are provided to you in word format so that you can continue to use these documents for your business on an ongoing basis.
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