felixthelogchopper

Employer's Liability covers your liability to the employee, not for what they do. I think you would have found that you would have benn liable via your PL for anything that they did while working for you. The issue is what constitutes a bona fide subcontractor rather than an employee. It is true that you don't need EL for a bona fide subcontractor but the phrases 'subcontractor' and 'self employed' are not interchangeable. As soon as somebody is working under your direction then in the eyes of the law they are an employee. There are many indicators as to status of employment, revolving around who decides when and how the job is done etc.

Just bought mine too.

You need to be looking at Employer's Liability with regard to the Law of Tort for that.

I'd be more concerned about an aggressive crackhead with something sharp myself.

I would say he is still integral. You wouldn't have him do the job at a separate time to when the tree work itself is done and it is easy to argue that he is there as a part of a team effort. The point about the stump grinder is that he can turn up anytime after the tree is down and do the job without direction other than 'grind that stump' whereas the groundie and climber are difficult to separate from each other. To go into further detail I would need my Tort text books which haven't been unpacked yet.

People also need to consider that if it gets physical, it could just as easily be themselves getting hurt rather than the member of the public.

You could sub out something like the stump grind where it is a clear separate job, ie they could come days later and do the same job. When you look at subbie climbers or groundies, they are such an integral part of the job that it is impossible to separate them from employee status.

It is indeed down to definition of employment and in this case, unless you are equal partners in the job, he is under your direction as to where,when and how the job is done so he is your employee in the terms of Employer's Liability. You would need to farm the whole job out to him in this case for him to be a bona fide subbie.

Unlikely. The groundy will be working under the direction of the climber(assuming the climber found the job) and so will be viewed as an employee for liability purposes.

Spot on.

I wish! I could always try the 'Arsenic and Old Lace' approach, I suppose. Few freebies wouldn't go amiss though.

What you are talking about is the defence of 'necessity', the leading precedent of which is F v West Berkshire Health Authority, in particular the reasoning of Lord Goff. Although on the surface the case seems to have no connection with what we are discussing, it establishes the precedent of the defence itself. You would need to show that there was no option other than the unwarranted laying on of hands to prevent the harm. In other words, if you manhandle the person because they are holding you up and you want to get the job done, rather than they are in imminent danger, then you have no defence. Them being thoroughly obnoxious and stupid is not, unfortunately, breaking any laws and they are not at that precise moment in any danger unless your subsequent actions, eg starting/continuing the cut or dropping timber which could be held for the time it took them to travel through the drop zone, puts them there. If, however, you have to physically stop them from entering the drop zone when there is wood on the way down (and no way of stopping it ie by not pushing it off in the 1st place) then you can legitimately say that you did what you did to prevent them from harm. You can be certain that your system of work will be closely examined to make sure that the situation could not have been avoided any other way, including better planning beforehand. Your actions will need to be seen to be an absolute last resort when all of your well laid plans were overridden by something which could not be anticipated.

It's not always black and white in UK law anyway, more down to powers of argument and basically finding(and, if necessary, gently bending) a precedent that supports your point of view better than the other side has done. If there was such a section on here, a big chunk of it would have to be caveats that it was for discussion purposes only and not to be relied on as 'gospel'.

They're distant relations of mine. Never met them but they gave my Mum a full family tree when she was doing her side of the genealogy.

Name badge looks photoshopped.

Army Pro boots. Goretex lined and easily available.

Any unwarranted laying on of hands is a battery, contrary to The Offences Against The Person Act 1861(section (ii0, IIRC). If you or another person is in danger from an ongoing attack, or you perceive them to be in danger, then you are allowed to use a permissible degree of force to prevent the danger. You could not legally retaliate if their part of the assault had finished. In the event of the person themself being in danger, there is the defence of necessity where your actions, although illegal per se, are necessary to prevent something worse happening. This is precedent from F v West Berkshire Health Authority where it was held that the sterilisation of a woman in a mental health institution without her permission (she was deemed unable to grant or deny permission on the grounds of mental age) was justified as she had begun a sexual relationship with another inmate and she would have suffered mental harm had she become pregnant. You would have to be able to argue that you had laid hands on the person as the consequences of you not doing so would have been worse for them.

If you aren't using Bio then you shouldn't have a congealed stuff issue. I think Treequip is more on the mark with draining the tank.

Fair point on both counts. Is the garage a busy one? If not, they might have the condensation issue in their tanks, but that still doesn't explain the intermittent fault. Was the filter a pattern part as sometimes the sealing ring can cause problems?

I used to run an old Maverick on the stuff and had so many problems that I went back to regular diesel. Final straw was finding a big ball of what I can only describe as jelly in the filter when the weather turned cold, and that was after 2 tanks of normal fuel. I do remember having a lot of trouble with water in the fuel, which I put down to a bad supply.

You aren't using Biodiesel, are you?

Decay wood looks like Ash with Inonotus as well.

Trouble with names like that is that they can go wrong. For example, we have a ready-mix concrete firm near us called 'Jim'll mix it'.

Sounds like he would have had some connection with the MacLean (check spelling) mission. There is a fair amount of writing on the subject. It was a very political area of the war with 2 factions of the resistance in the Balkans, the Communists under Tito and the Royalists/ Cetniks under Mihailovic with the Communists eventually winning the support. There were also issues with SOE operatives 'going native'.I seem to remember a few famous names being involved, including the writer Evelyn (or was it Auberon?) Waugh. I do have a couple of books on the subject but unfortunately they are still in boxes from the move.