National Trust sued

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

I take on board you prior post RE:

 

 

however laws are tested by courts for validity, so even though the drafting my say "any plant, shrub or tree, of whatever origin, is to be regarded as a natural feature of the landscape" it only becomes truly the case once it has been tested by the courts.

 

if we take the logical point of view as applied for other feature of the landscape (natural vs. man made) and we apply the same methodology to trees then

 

a naturally self set tree in a private woodland with little influence from "man" ware the public are not meant to be and if the public are there they are trespassing would logically have a lower liability than a stately home that opens its doors to the public and has a landscaped garden with trees planted by man in not necessarily natural positions which probably for 100+ years have had “men” messing with them then you could say that has a higher liability.

 

If we take something similar like a rock face, if it’s a natural feature like at the coast or can occur in-land threw geological formation there is little or no onus on the land owner to fence it off or provide warnings as it’s a totally natural feature, on the other hand if the rock face was as a result of quarrying (man made/influenced) then the onus would be to fence it off and provide warning as it NOT a natural feature.

 

Do you perhaps see that the rock face analogy mirrors the two sides “natural self set woodland that is private and NOT open to the public vs. formal gardens ostensibly engineered to look natural but are not and are heavily influence by man and open to the public”

 

 

I agree perhaps more trees would be lost if my view was taken but that is better than a single child dying because someone was a bit conservative with the proverbial axe, if we were to take things a step further and perhaps embrace keeping trees that may have a question mark over them with respect to safety but want to be kept for aesthetics then what’s to stop a simple fence being put around them with adequate warnings to keep the public out of the possible danger zone, I am sure it would be better to chuck £1000 of fencing around the tree and keep it and the public safe than chuck £1000 a felling etc and losing its aesthetic value etc.

 

whatb a rubbish perspective, 1 in 10 million chance of death bu tree, 1 in 18 million death by lightning, then look at road traffic accidents, now whats the real perspective?

[Rob D]

As you used the MoT as an example even though it is quite irrelevant to this thread

 

if the MoT examiner is found to have passed vehicles threw MoT's when they shouldn’t have passed and it has been reported then they can will lose there licence to issue MoT's for VOSA, for car dealers who issue MoT certificates for cars they are selling which shouldn’t have had an MoT in there currant condition there is legal redress should an accident happen in an unsafe car, I know of a few that have been prevented for X number of years or life and subject to retraining, unfortunately in arb there is NO such method of weeding out the less than scruples or inept people who examine trees.

 

 

But he was talking about mechanical failure between MOTs NOT whether the car was incorrectly MOT'd

 

 

And in that respect it's quite a good example!

[armchairarborist]

trees have been falling of folk for thousands of years without anybody getting blamed, i know, lets find someone to blame all of a sudden.

[Rob D]

 

 

I agree perhaps more trees would be lost if my view was taken but that is better than a single child dying because someone was a bit conservative with the proverbial axe, if we were to take things a step further and perhaps embrace keeping trees that may have a question mark over them with respect to safety but want to be kept for aesthetics then what’s to stop a simple fence being put around them with adequate warnings to keep the public out of the possible danger zone, I am sure it would be better to chuck £1000 of fencing around the tree and keep it and the public safe than chuck £1000 a felling etc and losing its aesthetic value etc.

 

Who's going to pay all these £1000?

 

Kids can climb over fences.

 

In an ideal world we'd do everything to prevent another child dying through an accident but we don't because we don't live in an ideal world

[Amelanchier]

Tony S. can you reccomend any books to clue up on the law around such things, and have links to importnt historic cases:001_smile:

 

Could try Charles Mynors' Tree Law, Hama

 

Like the man says - Mynors is the bible. He was due to be releasing a new version in 2010 but maybe he's just waiting for a decent gap between high profile cases!!!

[Amelanchier]

...however laws are tested by courts for validity, so even though the drafting my say "any plant, shrub or tree, of whatever origin, is to be regarded as a natural feature of the landscape" it only becomes truly the case once it has been tested by the courts.

 

if we take the logical point of view as applied for other feature of the landscape (natural vs. man made) and we apply the same methodology to trees then

 

a naturally self set tree in a private woodland with little influence from "man" ware the public are not meant to be and if the public are there they are trespassing would logically have a lower liability than a stately home that opens its doors to the public and has a landscaped garden with trees planted by man in not necessarily natural positions which probably for 100+ years have had “men” messing with them then you could say that has a higher liability.

 

If we take something similar like a rock face, if it’s a natural feature like at the coast or can occur in-land threw geological formation there is little or no onus on the land owner to fence it off or provide warnings as it’s a totally natural feature, on the other hand if the rock face was as a result of quarrying (man made/influenced) then the onus would be to fence it off and provide warning as it NOT a natural feature.

 

Do you perhaps see that the rock face analogy mirrors the two sides “natural self set woodland that is private and NOT open to the public vs. formal gardens ostensibly engineered to look natural but are not and are heavily influence by man and open to the public”

 

I see what you're getting at but I think there are still some problems with that interpretation - not least because the CRoW act only deals with designated access land which is necessarily in the open countryside rather than private parkland. Also the legislation explicitly states that whatever their origin, (i.e., whether they were planted or not) trees are to be regarded (for the purposes of the law) as 'natural' - if someone has been hacking them about to the extent that they have created a hazard then they have perhaps been reckless (and are then liable) but the features may still remain 'natural' (again for the purposes of the law). Interesting that no liability is owed with respect to any body of water as well, whether natural or not.

 

I don't think for a minute that the CRoW act means that landowners can turn a blind eye to obvious dangers, I suspect that it aims to sensibly absolve them or responsibility for those parts of their land that they might not reasonably even see from one year to the next! There is probably some politics here too - it would be difficult enough to grant the public a right to roam without giving the landowners something in return (freedom from ambulance chasers). I just happen to like the approach, but it wouldn't be appropriate in every circumstance.

[gensetsteve]

There is only one answer to the problem which is to cut the trees down which would be very sad. I feel sorry for the family and their loss but if you enter a wooded area you have to accept the risk something may fall on you.

 

When working on building sites we have to risk asess hazards left on site overnight in case kids break through the safety barriers and fencing. If anyone is tresspassing and gets injured, tough they should be paying the contractor compensation not sueing because their off spring went joy riding in a dump truck. Its now implied that all plant should have additional imobilisation other than an ignition key.

[b101uk]

whatb a rubbish perspective, 1 in 10 million chance of death bu tree, 1 in 18 million death by lightning, then look at road traffic accidents, now whats the real perspective?

 

I see both sides of the argument and as with most things I take the contra position to the majority who are mostly of blinkered opinion, I also realise most people in this world have little technical knowledge of trees, I sure most of us arb and forestry lot if they take the family for a walk threw woodland or around a park we naturally are LOOKING at what trees we are walking under and scanning for dangers/risk posed by them.

 

As you bought up statistics, if you closed all the roads for a day and made all road users walk threw woodland, parks and other wooded area for the same duration as they would spend driving/travailing by road how many people would get killed by trees in a day, if it was any more than 6.08 deaths per day it would be more dangerous than the roads, if we however made the same people walk the same equivalent distance as they would drive in a normal day but they have to do it on foot for as many day as it would take to cover that distance there would be lots of deaths per day in the countryside from slips, trips, falls, drowning, hart attacks from exertion, exposure to the elements and so on, so despite the 2220 odd road deaths per year if we removed people en masse from road and made them walk the countryside the countryside would claim more lives and its only because roads have removed masses of people from traversing the countryside that it now appear safer than roads.

[Dean Lofthouse]

Let's just hope common sense prevails

[b101uk]

trees have been falling of folk for thousands of years without anybody getting blamed, i know, lets find someone to blame all of a sudden.

 

people have been getting "blame" and paying damages for all sorts of things for hundreds of years, we can safely say the little boy who got killed was NOT doing anything illegal and because of his age it is taken that he is not a tree expert and NOT an employee and NOTHING he did caused the event that took place, he would be what you would call blame-less, thus blame must lay else ware.

 

i.e.

parent/guardian (teacher/s if on school trip), NT, arb consultant, arb company, etc to name but a few.

 

We can say if the tree had been removed it wouldn’t have happened.

 

We can also say had the branch weakness been spotted and/or acted upon it wouldn’t have happened.

 

We can say had the NT not opened its gardens to the public on a blustery day it would not have happened.

 

We can say had the NT put a fence around the tree at radius equal to >150% of the tree height it would not have happened.

 

We could say the parent/guardian/etc are to blame for taking the kid under the tree BUT who exactly gave them a warning of the dangers posed by objects/features contained on NT property and surly ANY H&S risk assessment for opening NT property to the public on a blustery day would pickup on trees and branches falling on visitors wile they look around the gardens/grounds.