LAWYERS, LIABILITY AND CLIMBING

Kent Richards wrote: From the link, I'd say that someone other than the climber was definitely at fault. The climber got dropped, and the description reads that it was due poor instruction, inattention, or more general failure to adequately manage risk by the tower operator / staff. As a former outdoor educator / raft guide, I think that at some point the service provider or guide definitely has a responsibility to provide a reasonable standard of care and that Alpine Tower case looks like a failure to do so.

And how exactly do you prove that it was the trainer's fault? This is about the same as having an eye witness for a court case, they are bad and to be honest are at least wrong in some facts 75% of the time.

Lets face it sitting through a belay class for 30mins to an hour isn't really going to teach anyone how to 100% prevent an accident. This is part of the reason why i have seen alot of gyms force use of ground anchored gri-gri to belay, because you really have to screw something up to drop someone with that.

From the very start i always was climbing with someone who knew what they are doing so it was easy to say hey am i tied in correct, but people do come into gyms and belay each other and have no true experience besides an hour at most class. Is this really safe? To be honest no and i am surprised more people don't get hurt. I see first time people screw up tying in all the time, it isn't because someone didn't teach them correctly but they just forget before it becomes muscle memory. Most of the time you really don't need a strong knot to hold a top rope fall so even with a screwed up knot you are probably going to be ok, but it does create a risk.

How come they are suing everything but the person that dropped them? Despite that person acknowledging that they knew they were incompetent at the time, and attempted to fix a piece of safety equipment that they weren't qualified for, despite there being an instructor nearby?

FTW.

ViperScale wrote:And how exactly do you prove that it was the trainer's fault?

It appears that the defendant proved their omission themselves:

"
The coup d’état or fait accompli of the case was the judge accepted that the defendant, who had several employees serving on the ACCT standards committee, failed to meet the standards created by the ACCT. What standard? The standard created on how to teach and test belayers.

Alpine Towers has several employees who serve on the standards committee for the Association for Challenge Courses Technology, which Lackey called a “climbing society.” Despite evidence of this standard climbing industry practice, Alpine Towers did not teach Fort Mill that it needed to test, how the tests should be conducted, or what particular skills should be tested.

Then the defendants own instruction manual was quoted by the court as proof the defendant had not followed its own standards.

Ashley testified she was not given a written test, but was required to do a “demonstration” and be watched by a faculty member to make sure she “knew how to do it.” There was no evidence; however, that Alpine Towers took any steps to ensure Fort Mill gave an adequate test of her competency. In fact, Alpine Towers’ instruction manual says only that students “will demonstrate proficiency in belaying before being permitted to belay.”
"

Guess that is my point unless the person who is suppose to teach them how to do it says they didn't it is very hard to prove that they didn't.

Tronald Dump wrote:How come they are suing everything but the person that dropped them? Despite that person acknowledging that they knew they were incompetent at the time, and attempted to fix a piece of safety equipment that they weren't qualified for, despite there being an instructor nearby? FTW.

They did sue the belayer, the school (which owned the climbing tower) and the manufacturer of the tower. The case reported involved only the seller because the other defendants either settled or were dropped before trial. The plaintiffs could have dropped the case against the belayer because their case was weak, or--since she was a high school senior--maybe she didn't have any assets worth going after.

The manufacturer was found liable because it failed to properly train the school personnel in how to operate the climbing tower (which was required under the contract the school had with the manufacturer) and because it could have provided an alternative belay device (a Gri-Gri instead of Trango Jaws) that would have substantially reduced the likelihood of the very incident that occurred.

The manufacturer did argue that the belayer's failure to properly belay was an "intervening cause" that relieved it of liability. Generally, that only works if the claimed intervening negligence is unforeseeable. The court shot that down because it was clearly foreseeable by the manufacturer (and in fact the manufacturer knew) that new belayers, and particularly adolescents, make belay errors.

I agree that a person probably should not be able to sue a company for damages resulting in the direct and willing participation in a hazardous activity that results in injuries that are clearly analogous of the risks involved in the sport. However, participants absolutely should be able to sue in the case of legitimate negligence.

In other words, if I deck because my gym belayer sucks, that's not the gym's fault. On the other hand, if I deck because a piece of equipment fixed to the gym wall fails, then that's the gym's fault for improperly installing and/ or maintaining and inspecting the structure and attached equipment. Both examples are examples of negligence, but only one of those examples is outside the realm of what the participant should reasonably accept as activity-specific risk. Gyms have a duty to protect their partisipants from risks involved in the improper maintnence or installation of gym-owened equipment just as a guide has a duty to protect his client from dumb crap like threading the GriGri backwards on a multi-pitch route.

Here is a wierd one with a criminal charge:

recreation-law.com/2014/10/…

I know at our gym they had a guy threaten to sue because he shattered his ankle due to climbing past a draw on an overhanging wall that he didn't unclip. Some people do have bad common sense when it comes to thinks like this (and they are told to unclip as they go up). Needless to say i am pretty sure he never made it anywhere with the lawsuit.

Interesting article:

recreation-law.com/2015/08/…

Scott M. McNamara wrote:Interesting article: recreation-law.com/2015/08/…

That was interesting, thanks for posting!

their "should have used a gri" argument should be invalid in courts because the petzl doesn't claim it is auto locking and explicitly says to keep the brake hand on. if anyone should be liable it would be the belayer because it's their responsibility to belay safely.

Scott M. McNamara wrote:Interesting article: recreation-law.com/2015/08/…

I'm not sure how I feel about the validity of an article that full of typos, but regardless the message is downright depressing. Tracking accidents over time would, regardless of what you are doing about them, strike me as a responsible thing to do. Just to be clear, I'm not saying I disagree with the article, I just think it's more proof of how f'ed up our legal culture has become.

Another climbing gym case:

recreation-law.com/2015/09/…