[at-l] Lean-to Liability

[ellen at clinic.net (Bob C.)]

>"...Ok, you're going to have to explain to me how taking shelters DOWN is the
>'civilization machine' creeping in."

It's not the fact or non fact of shelters that denotes "civilization." Humans
and other animals since emerging from the slime of ancient seas have always
sought shelter from wind, rain, cold, and snow.

 Rather civilization has fostered the irrational idea that somehow someone else
 should compensate you for accidents that occur from your choices -- that the
 good samaritan should pay if his efforts to help cause harm.

 As this list attests, humans seek wildness and desire to experience the natural
 world. The notion that a landowner who provides such opportunities free of
 charge should be also be liable for the hurts people experience while seeking
 wildness and experience in the natural world is absurd.

 That a law is even needed to prevent absurdities reflects a fundamental flaw in
 our "civilized" legal system.

 However, Maine has such a law so I never worried when people wandered in my two
 woodlots. Though no one, of course, should trust judges to invariably make
 sensible decisions, my pockets were so shallow few would have been tempted to
 sue anyway.

 I worry more about our land trust however. We either own or have interest in
 several million dollars worth of land. Our pockets are deep. So we pay an
 insurance company $1,600 a year to protect us against a liability that the law
 says doesn't exist, on the oft chance that some panel of judges at some point
 may decree that the law is unconstitutional.

  We pay to protect ourselves against what I think of as the "counting ballots
  syndrome."

 Weary