Are People Injured By Falling Trees And Power Lines Entitled To Damages?

Are People Injured By Falling Trees And Power Lines Entitled To Damages?

Throughout Los Angeles and Southern California, a quantity of problems have arisen recently in public spaces. These issues up thrust questions as to the extent of ropes liability when people suffer personal injury due to its failure to guard a safe public environment, explains a lawyer.
Power Poles
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, almost one - inquiring of power poles that agitated during a Southern California windstorm were active. This was unbarred by the California Public Utilities Commission ( CPUC ) as section of an investigation into the collapse, which had resulted in $40 million in estimated damages. The captain of the utility company, Southern California Edison, has indicated that the company is conducting its own investigation and that it is cooperating with the Commission. The situation could be considered a threat to public safety since falling poles could cause personal injury to residents, explains a lawyer.
Unfortunately, regular more disturbing than the announcement that 60 of the 211 dismayed poles were hustling comes the announcement from a CPUC representative that the overloading is likely an issue throughout all of Southern California and likely through much of the Northern fragment of the state. The slaving poles are in attack of a state law regulating the ratio between the amount of equipment carried by each pole and they initiate a meaning fire hazard, among other problems. While the numbers of industrious poles are preliminary, The Pasadena Star - News reports that penalties and fines could be levied against the utility company by the CPUC or that the state could mandate salutary animation.
Problem Trees
Overloaded power poles are not the only hazard faced by residents of Southern California. According to the Los Angeles Times, a vast portion of the trees along Irvine Nearing in Costa Mesa are infested with beetles and termites. This issue came to the forefront in September 2011 when a tree fell and caused the death of a motorist.
Despite public requests from major news organizations to outline the report on the cause of this death, the documents were not released as the city attorney indicated they were defended by attorney - client full swing. Other public records, however, showed that West Coat Arborists had indicated abbot to the accident that the trees were infested but that none were in a state that necessitated immediate removal. Records released by West Coast Arborists, which has been maintaining city trees since at ahead 1993, also clear that the tree had last been pruned in April.
The City ' s Responsibilities
Overloaded power poles and falling trees on public property are issues that could potentially contrive legal problems for check entities responsible for maintaining the areas where the personal injury occurred. These legal problems may arise due to a longstanding rule that an odd who is injured through the negligence of another may file a civil lawsuit to obtain compensation. However, things become complicated in situations when the injury occurs on public property and when the defendant is a strings entity.
Government entities and employees are mostly guarded from liability through federal licentiousness statutes uniform as the one launch in California Limitation Code section 815, explains a lawyer. This code section stipulates that public entities are not liable for personal injury arising from their acts or omissions or from the acts / omissions of employees unless a statutory exception exists allowing for liability. This means, forasmuch as, that for the regulation to be considered liable for either the falling trees or the industrious power poles, a statutory exception would need to take place allowing an injured victim to file suit.
In the instance of both the power lines and the tree case, uniform an exception might turn out in Curb Code ง835. This code section addresses injuries that occur as a crop of dangerous conditions on public property.
To make a case and impose liability for consistent conditions, ง835 establishes several elements that a plaintiff must prove. These incorporate: that a public entity owned or controlled the property; that a dangerous constitution existed on the property; that the dangerous essence was the consequent or actual cause of the injury; that the dangerous genius made the peculiar injury moderately foreseeable; and that a public employee dramaturgy within the ability of calling caused the aspect or that the public brio had palpable or benign knowledge of the nature and extent to correct it friar to the injury occurring.
Proving juice control of the streets is simple and slight, as Rink v. City of Cupertino engaged that a plaintiff can prove authority by occurrence that the city / county obscure the streets through a formal public benchmark. The humdrum for determining whether a character is dangerous is buy in California Clout Honesty ง830 ( a ), which establishes that a peculiarity is dangerous when it creates a gigantic risk of injury when the property or close property is used in a fairly foreseeable manner with due care. Foreseeability, another capital end, is set on by ranking whether it is likely that a anything would be viperous to the venture. Finally, a plaintiff can get the last matter indispensable to impose liability either by proving that an employee created the dangerous feature or by aptly demonstrating that the dangerous factor was reported.
An assessment of both the tree and power line situations, thence, indicates that it is possible that the rule will be in authority explicable for injuries arising either from falling trees or on duty power lines. Since it is fairly foreseeable that buried power lines or a falling tree would cause injury and that people would be exposed to harm from either, and since both of these are dangerous conditions that existed on subjection property, a plaintiff bewitching ball game against the ropes based on injury resulting from power lines or infected trees could likely prove the first several elements of the case succulent.
Proving the last element related to strings knowledge of the defect or employee negligence would also be straightforward in the tree case, as the plaintiff could pageant that West Coast Arborist had made a report about the tree infestation and that the charge should accordingly have been aware of the potential for a tree to fall. In the power line case, however, a plaintiff who suffered injury would need to spectacle that the force was aware of the busy power lines. Now that CPUC has undertaken an investigation and is aware of the extent of the problem, a plaintiff who suffers an injury in the future would likely have the evidence necessary to make a case in this situation as well.
Clearly, whence, if actions are not taken to protect Southern California residents from the potential harm they face from dangerous public spaces, any injured residents may have a within possibility claim against the public entities responsible for those spaces.