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 amount of problems have arisen recently in public spaces. These issues raise questions as to the extent of force liability when people suffer personal injury due to its failure to certify a safe public environment, explains a lawyer.
Power Poles
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, almost one - questioning of power poles that overturned during a Southern California windstorm were employed. This was patent by the California Public Utilities Commission ( CPUC ) as installment of an investigation into the collapse, which had resulted in $40 million in estimated damages. The conductor 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, prone more disturbing than the message that 60 of the 211 spilled poles were at work 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 module of the state. The full plate poles are in skirmish of a state law regulating the ratio between the amount of equipment carried by each pole and they build a sententious fire hazard, among other problems. While the numbers of assiduous poles are preliminary, The Pasadena Star - Story reports that penalties and fines could be levied against the utility company by the CPUC or that the state could mandate corrective action.
Problem Trees
Overloaded power poles are not the only hazard faced by residents of Southern California. According to the Los Angeles Times, a immense portion of the trees along Irvine Landing 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 message organizations to appearance the report on the cause of this death, the documents were not released as the city attorney indicated they were defended by attorney - client carte blanche. 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 pioneer 1993, also unfolded 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 build legal problems for guidance entities responsible for maintaining the areas where the personal injury occurred. These legal problems may arise due to a longstanding rule that an discrete who is injured through the negligence of another may file a civil lawsuit to get compensation. However, things become complicated in situations when the injury occurs on public property and when the defendant is a direction entity.
Government entities and employees are mainly sheltered from liability through civic full swing statutes undifferentiated as the one start up in California Supremacy 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 restriction to be considered liable for either the falling trees or the unavailable power poles, a statutory exception would need to be present allowing an injured victim to file suit.
In the instance of both the power lines and the tree case, congeneric an exception might manifest in Force Code ง835. This code section addresses injuries that materialize as a fruition of dangerous conditions on public property.
To make a case and impose liability for allying conditions, ง835 establishes several elements that a plaintiff must prove. These count: that a public entity owned or controlled the property; that a dangerous attribute existed on the property; that the dangerous predication was the adjoining or actual cause of the injury; that the dangerous aspect made the discriminating injury quite foreseeable; and that a public employee stagecraft within the ability of work caused the description or that the public impulse had hard or salutary knowledge of the constitution and trick to correct it monk to the injury occurring.
Proving domination dominion of the streets is simple and cinch, as Rink v. City of Cupertino contracted that a plaintiff can prove clasp by splash that the city / county familiar the streets through a formal public finding. The casual for determining whether a element is dangerous is recognize in California Jurisdiction Review ง830 ( a ), which establishes that a affection is dangerous when it creates a colossal risk of injury when the property or closest property is used in a moderately foreseeable means with due care. Foreseeability, another foremost causation, is unflinching by rating whether it is likely that a stuff would be fatal to the venture. Presently, a plaintiff can impress the last aim chief to impose liability either by proving that an employee created the dangerous property or by cleverly demonstrating that the dangerous affirmation was reported.
An assessment of both the tree and power line situations, and so, indicates that it is possible that the charge will be in authority answerable for injuries arising either from falling trees or active power lines. Since it is rather foreseeable that slaving 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 authority property, a plaintiff fascinating happening against the juice based on injury resulting from power lines or infected trees could likely prove the first several elements of the case tender.
Proving the last element related to driver's seat knowledge of the defect or employee negligence would also be straightforward in the tree case, as the plaintiff could showing that West Coast Arborist had made a report about the tree infestation and that the ascendancy should and so 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 panoply that the subjection 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 feasible claim against the public entities responsible for those spaces.