Asking for trouble?

[richy_B]

If you follow the letter of the law then I suppose the company are going to be found liable as there were measures that could have been taken to avoid or severely minimise such an incident. That said you would hope a reasonable person would say it was an unfortunate accident and all parties have suffered enough without fines and charges.

[flatyre]

whats the law in the UK say about log piles in public places? I do occasional work on a large public estate and about a year ago a huge beech came down and took out a number of mature and semi mature trees, made a right mess. Anyway a firm got the job of tidying it up, but all they did was cut it into random lengths and stack them haphazardly. There are 3metre lengths of 4 and 5 feet wide beech teetering on top of the pile which is in view of the public carpark, no fencing or anything else between the public and a very dangerous log pile. It was safer lying where it fell!

[Gary Prentice]

No law about log piles as such, just about what a reasonable person would do.

 

If by your actions, someone gets hurt/suffers loss, and this was foreseeable (by the man on the clapham omnibus) then there is a claim of negligence.

 

I think in this case, a judge would say that it was foreseeable that kids would climb a log stack - being kids and that should have been considered in the manner of stacking the stack.

[Spruce Pirate]

The FISA guides say stack should be built and maintained in a stable condition. Hand stacking generally not to exceed 1m in height and not generally exceed 2m in height for machine stacked. Stacks to be on level ground, not slopes, etc.

 

The 2m thing is, in my experience, very rarely upheld - most often sites aren't cleaned out quickly enough and there isn't enough room to stack if you don't go over this height. The general rule used is that stacks shouldn't exceed in height the length of the product. i.e., 3m product stack no higher than 3m.

FISA 304 Chainsaw cross-cutting.pdf

FISA 503 Extraction by forwarder.pdf