Insurance

[ian mckenzie]

Liability law uses typical landowners as the benchmark - here in Canada our national parks are being affected as if they were a shopkeeper - we've had suits alleging our NPs have 'harbored dangerous animals' which of course is part of their mandate.

There is a different 'duty of care' level depending on whether you charge for access, 'invite' vs. 'allow' people to visit vs. trespass... or if you knowingly have an 'attraction' such as a cave that you ought to have known would attract people. It's all very unfair and very much skewed towards removing people's responsibility for their own safety. But until there's a revolution and all the lawyers are hung, there's not much that can be done.

I suspect most landowners are not worried about being sued by cavers; they are worried about being sued by their parents.

As for insurance corps running at a loss - my understanding is that they have invested past profits in the stock markets and lost a bundle, and now expect the consumer to pick up their slack.

 

[eyecave]

:? comment........in my business i sometimes treat people who are permanently injured thru the careless neglect of fellow humans...........some of these people see me once or twice monthly for years...these people usually begin to suffer the problems they see me for after trying to use the injured body part to do something like what we all like to do each weekendand wednesday nite.....
....and these people have to pay me for my services!....and these bills continue for most of them all their life.........lawsuits that generate funds that the individual will pay out over a lifetime out of his pocket twice a week for years is money that is well deserved by that person injured by the carelessness of his fellow idiots........other lawsuits ( i have withdrawn my services from) have varied from silly to ludicrous...from undeserved to unfounded........most lawsuits involve temporary injuries that should be settled by the insurance company paying for the patients bills......lawyers fees be damned.....if the liability of an individual can be established then the injured deserve treatment and just compensation....... :!: ...
i have seen this issue from the side of the injured also....
BUT..........BUT.........when a person trespasses to enter or chooses by whatever means to enter a cave i think the rules and laws should be considered differently......i choose my caving companions.....i choose the type of cave i go into.......it is this basis that the laws in TAG use to relieve the landowner from liability in courts......
i read in this discussion that no BRIT landowner has been sued!.....thats marvelous!....are ya'll still a the stage where its just scare talk by organized cavers that have stirred up the problem???.. :evil:
TAG cavers also use the scci (southeastern cave conservancy) to relieve landowners of the liability issue.......legal concerns really really screwed up caving in the states also....in the seventies in TAG there weren't 10 people that went caving every weekend.....the landowners of the most popular caves saw a lot of traffic from the group of occasional cavers.... but very little visitation bothered the average landowner whose land contained the vast majority of unknown rarely visited caves.....then came hunting clubs and the popularization movement among organize cavers....

multiple groups increasing usages of the same land surfaces.. and increased numbers of cavers, and written cave book directions published in guidebooks necessitated the organization of a group to use pooled money to buy the entrances of these "legal liabilities" (caves) from landowners.....its worked real well to have been so cheap.......
:shock:

 

[eyecave]

:twisted: ian shame on you!!....we shouldn't hang lawyers!!!......to limit the methods utilized to give them their final torment is too kind.......some of them surely deserve drowning or burning..........does england suffer from lawyers running the country?.....lawyers sure as hell run the good ole u s of a....
karl marx......he saw the weakness of capitalism as the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few........i wonder.....did he visualize and verbalize and envision the extent of damnation due to the concentration of the power of the creation of policy in the hands of the lawyers............. :?: yaknow......i mite me wrong :!: ....maybe humans aren't stupid.....maybe we're just stupid and confused!!.... :shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[dunc]

in my business i sometimes treat people who are permanently injured thru the careless neglect of fellow humans..

If it is genuine careless neglect then maybe theres a point BUT in this day and age the vast majority of people will not accept responsiblity for their own actions - any accident ranging from the ever so slight to anything major *always* has to be *someone elses* fault - these narrow minded individuals are destroying everybody elses lives and freedom in their pathetic pursuit of compensation - its about time people on this planet accepted responsibility for their own actions and choices instead of laying blame on others... but that won't happen whilst money grabbing twats hang around and encourage them to claim... ahh well, back to sad reality.. :shock:

i read in this discussion that no BRIT landowner has been sued!.....thats marvelous!....are ya'll still a the stage where its just scare talk by organized cavers that have stirred up the problem???..

I hope that is true and remains so, personally I can't understand how any landowner could be successfully sued by a caver - why the f**k should any landowner have any duty of care to anyone crossing their land or entering any cave? but who knows.. :?

Dunc

 

[cap n chris]

I believe a landowner's duty of care to trespassers is designed to highlight those (few) instances where landowners have specifically, and maliciously, targetted them; i.e. setting traps (both lethal and non-lethal). In such circumstances it is easier to understand why any landowner engaging in this sort of (mediaeval) practice (remember "man traps"?) would find themselves in court. Mind you, I don't see how this is relevant to cavers and cave access.

"Trespass" is also a strange one since (a) apparently it doesn't exist (put me right, please!) and (b) my understanding of "the newly-named offence" is that you need to have more than one person engaging "in an activity" on someone else's land AND a senior police officer (not constable) must be on site to witness/arrest the offenders (again, put me right if I am barking up the wrong tree on this one too!).

 

[ian mckenzie]

My understanding (and Canadian law is different from British) is that 'trespass' has a different definition depending on the application (criminal or liability). You are right (I think) that the duty of care to the trespasser is very low i.e. you must not set out to deliberately harm them. However, if the owner is aware of or ought to be aware of an attraction on his land, or has in the past tolerated trespassers without attempting to stop them, they may be elevated to the status of 'licensee' i.e. an uninvited but legal visitor, in which case the duty of care is higher (the 'premises' must be free of obvious hazards, such as ice on the front step or a gaping hole in your field...).

 

[Titch98]

Trespass - In law, an act of entering upon or invading the property, rights, or person of another without permission and with the actual or implied use of force.

Taken from the good old dictionary (UK). I certainly have not been on any lands that I did not have permission for and I definately have not used, or intended to use, force!

Organisations such as the DCA, NCA, BCRA etc. are doing a bloomin good job at keeping access to caves open through negotiations with land owners and I take my hat of to them.

Although there is an issue at some sites with regards to insurance, there are still many others available where insurance is not a requirement.

In my opinion, and this is going back to previous posts, the issue of insurance for cavers has been blown out of proportion. It is easier to get insurance for such sports as hand-gliding, parachuting, climbing and micro-lighting than it is to get for caving.

Does this mean that these sports are less dangerous? :?:

Do I have insurance? No and if I have an accident, it is my own stupid fault. Will I get insurance? Possibly in the future when the rules and recommendations for cavers goes totally tits up..........if there is anywhere left to get some from. Lets just hope that the decline in caving activity over the past few months, due to insurance issues, is short lived and things get sorted out and set straight soon.

 

[cap n chris]

A short interlude for a slap up meal is now overdue. Can we recommence discussion another day?

N.B. The dictionary definition of a word isn't quite the same as the application of law. Also, you CAN get insurance specifically for caving: contact Sportscover Direct 0845 1206400 (but you might want to wait for a couple of weeks as there have been murmurings that news on the topic may be forthcoming shortly, apparently).