Slammed

In the last post I was carelessly dismissive of a world governed by insurance, where every action has a legal consequence. However it can also be argued that overt safety considerations are equally important.

When my son was around seven or eight years old he nearly died due to outright negligence by...some construction authority. Or, at the very least, he narrowly avoided life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. This, I’m embarrassed to say, whilst under my care.

We were fishing together in Watson’s Bay, off the end of the wharf, whilst waiting for his mother. She was finishing her lunch shift at Doyle’s restaurant on the same wharf.

At that time the wharf was undergoing renovations to accommodate the new Rivercat ferry service. This required the installation of a water-level boarding platform and stairway access, all constructed from concrete. The job was nearly complete except for the railings, yet no temporary safety barriers had been installed over the weekend.

I was fishing the northern side of the pier whilst my son stood behind me, facing the City. As we were using hand fishing reels the boy, unbeknownst to me, decided to pull his line in by walking backwards. We’ve all seen kids do this whilst fishing, though not in the manner witnessed by his mother.

She watched in horror from inside the restaurant, paralysed and unable to do anything as he slowly walked backwards off the wharf ! He completed a full reverse somersault to land three metres below, face first, onto the concrete deck.

The sound of his body slamming the deck with a sickening thud was possibly the worst sound I’ve ever heard and instantly had me running. I found him struggling to his feet, shocked and dazed with a only a minor cut to his chin. How lucky was that?

Needless to say I let Woollahra Council know about the situation the following Monday. Every kid, I’m sure, can tell a similar tale of misadventure and close calls. Spill it, kids !

Comments

[Andy]

I know its not exactly what you're after - but it was a close call for me due to old school 'safety'...

Melbourne, 1984 Dec 31, 11:45 pm

7 years old, standing on a Balcony overlooking my family and friends swimming in the pool on New Years Eve. Turned to run back inside the house, didnt realise someone had shut the sliding glass door behind me. This was in the era before Safety Glass which crumbles and has no sharp edges and before safety stickers on glass doors, and nice patterns so you can see the door.

Ran through the door at full speed, as only an excited kid would - massive cuts and lacerations , sliced halfway through the muscle in my left leg, over a hundred stitches below my knee alone - was the youngest person in Australia at the time to have micro surgery.

Close call? I like to think so...Im horrified to think of what would have happened had I hit the door face first, rather than leg first which broke the glass for the rest of my body to pass through. Thank god these days for safety glass and reinforced glass...

I did get to be on the news though,and get a free flight home to Sydney with Qantas :)

[Matt]

Back when my father was a truck driver, I used to ride with him on his trips interstate (being a toddler at the time, I don't remember very much). I've been told that I repeatedly tried to climb out the passenger window of the cab to see my dad. Naturally, this led to a couple of unfortunate events.

One was a close call that saw my dad make a run for his life to catch me as I fell out of the cab window. Another time a similar thing happened, only I ended up in hospital having my head stitched back together. No lasting damage, fortunately, but it's a clear reminder to me whenever I start to complain about insurance in any way.

[adrian]

Andy, that's exactly the story, harrowing as it is (shudder). Matt, you'd agree that a stitched head, albeit nasty enough, won't topple Andy as the clubhouse leader.

As for my own close call, besides narrowly avoiding running into the path of a vehicle (mandatory for all kids) I recall as a toddler sinking like a stone to the bottom of the lake at Charmhaven when my mother was momentarily distracted. It's weird how vividly one remembers such events.

[Kim]

No, it's not strange that one recalls such things in crystal detail. That's the way brains work, Adrian. :)

I also sank like the proverbial stone, but in a pool, and was strangely calm & happy about the entire event and was waiting placidly to die, when I was pulled (gasping) to the surface by a dad sitting poolside who saw me go under.

[alice]

i know people often sue after an accident so they can pay for a lifetime of care for someone who has become a quadriplegic.. what did they do in the old days? was care provided by the state? did the disabled person have to go into an institution to be cared for?

[Goldstein]

Alice: Yup, in the "old days", and increasingly nowadays, people ended up in nursing homes...

If you are lucky, you'll have someone to sue -if the crippling injuries cannot be blamed on anyone else, you are -to use a good old fashioned Australian term -rooted..

In the old days people had to be cared for by families, parents, relying on charities and trying to stay out of institutions like the "Home for Incurables". And if you go back just a couple of hundred years, they would end up in the street or the workhouse, or an Asylum if they were lucky.

What we know as the modern tort of Negligence ("duty of care" cases) is relatively recent, founded in English/Australian law by:

Donoghue (or M’Alister) v Stevenson ([1932] A.C. 562, 1932 S.C. (H.L.) 31, [1932] All ER Rep 1)

It has been refined since then, but that's where the "duty of care" basically began for the purposes of suing in "Negligence"..

So if you're going to be injured, pray someone can be blamed other than you..