National Trust sued

[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.

[Justme]

There's no way the church has enough money to have the level of work done needed, but I'm doing the deadwooding for free.

 

 

Ok so he is your mate so I get why you are doing him a favour but the church has LOADS of money.

[Andy Collins]

Ok so he is your mate so I get why you are doing him a favour but the church has LOADS of money.

 

A popular misconception I'm afraid, the CofE has loads of money, the RC church has loads of money. Unfortunately the parish churches have to pay into the Diocese a large sum every year (several thousand pounds) some of which is given to them from the Parish Councils, some from collections and gifts, but thats about their lot. They can approach the Diocese to petition for a Faculty to assist with large payments for essential works, and this is decided by the Consistory Court of the Diocese, and is by no means a guarantee of funds to be released. I have advised on a few Faculty applications, for essential tree safety works, some go through, some dont. I'm currently trying to push through one, but it doesnt look promising this time.

[felixthelogchopper]

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!!!

 

At £120, I will wait for the update

[Tony Croft aka hamadryad]

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.

 

thats the biggest pile of BS ive heard, 2220 deaths would oocur if we banned the car? I dont bloody think so! maybe the 220 on the end if that. i dont check the trees i walk under despite having had a few near misses (only because I seek out neglected ancient woodland areas riddle with fungi!)

 

I am unafraid of trees, because i know how rare an event it is for one to fail. it is usualy VERY obvious which ones are TRULY a threat, and we undervalue our inherant "instinct" to risk.

 

the trouble with these cases is they generate a reaction that goes so far the other way as to be obscene and it is the environment that suffers in these cases.

 

1 in 10,000,000 chance, so low in fact the HSE are really not that involved nor concerned, so what does THAT say.

[andy26]

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.

 

Must there always be blame?

 

Trees prevent a risk. Period.

 

It should be accepted if you go near a tree your are accepting the implied risk of it or part of it falling on you.

 

I feel the more we want someone to remove all the risks from the life, the more fragile we become.

[skyhuck]

To suggest that trees are as dangerous as lumps of steel weighing up to 44 tons doing 30mph upwards, has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.

[Andy Collins]

This was on the local news tonight, as they are following the case in the court. It was mentioned that the tree has shed 2 limbs in a 30 year period, (IIRC) 2 acts of nature, 2 small blips in the lifetime of a tree, what are the odds of someone being under at the exact time the branch failed, yet this time there was a group of children. How far should we go to remove this risk totally, after all one life lost is one too many? Keep the kids away from all trees? How far do we need to go, hundreds of trees around an estate, large mature trees, is it necessary to go beyond a VTA from the ground? Just in case?

[felixthelogchopper]

It all comes down to that great catch all word in law, reasonable. The owner of the tree has to show that they have considered the risk presented by the tree and taken all reasonable steps to mitigate said risk. The case to illustrate it, IIRC, is to do with an errant cricket ball leaving the ground and striking a member of the public, a shot which was described by the great Lord Denning as a once in a lifetime occurence. LD found that , given the unlikeliness of the event, the cricket club had taken enough precautions to be in the clear even though they had failed to prevent the accident happening. Wish I could remember the name of the case.

[andy26]

It all comes down to that great catch all word in law, reasonable. The owner of the tree has to show that they have considered the risk presented by the tree and taken all reasonable steps to mitigate said risk. The case to illustrate it, IIRC, is to do with an errant cricket ball leaving the ground and striking a member of the public, a shot which was described by the great Lord Denning as a once in a lifetime occurence. LD found that , given the unlikeliness of the event, the cricket club had taken enough precautions to be in the clear even though they had failed to prevent the accident happening. Wish I could remember the name of the case.

 

Thanks for the cricket link;

 

here's details of the case

 

Miller v Jackson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Lord Dennings lyrical opening is very interesting.

 

Glad to see common sense prevailed, even if it did take the court of appeal to see it.

 

Although perhaps this was the more specific case you were thinking of;

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolton_v_Stone

Edited June 23, 2011 by andy26