Safety Glass

Hi, I’m Indiana personal injury attorney David Holub.

This video discusses safety glass and why it’s important to use in doors and windows to prevent injuries.

Over the years, we have helped individuals who have suffered injuries as a result of the failure to use proper safety glass. In one case, a young eight or nine year old was coming out of an apartment building and pushed on the door and bumped into the glass pane of the door and it shattered. It nearly severed a nerve in her arm because it was not safety glass. What had happened?

The landlord had simply replaced the glass that had broken a week earlier with unprotected safety glass.  Safety glass is usually tempered or laminated, and instead of just breaking apart into sharp shards, it will break into little small pieces that are far less harmful. In that particular case, building codes required the use of safety glass in the window pane at issue, and the landlord was simply negligent in putting in a pane of ordinary glass. He thought he could get away with it. It was cheaper. Another case was at a school where the children were exiting to go to recess, and one child pushed on the door, which was locked, and fell through the window.

The window did not have proper safety glass. He was seriously injured. Federal law calls for safety glazing on glass panes in homes and buildings where there are defined safety hazards, such as doors, sidelights, next to doors, and bathroom shower enclosures.  Many local building codes also mandate safety glass in residential circumstances.

Although buildings built decades ago may be equipped with a type of glass that is not safety glass, most states require that if an old pain of glass breaks and a new pane has to be put in, that the new pane should be tempered safety glass.

If you think that a code violation has occured or some other careless situation has resulted in injury, one of our attorneys would be happy to speak with you and answer your questions.