Something else to consider. The Right Of Way, is almost always wider than the Driven Way (or the paved part of the street). For instance, in Denver suburbs, the ROW is often 50 feet. But the paved portion of the street is usually 34-36 feet.
Have you looked at the map of this place? Google Maps has streetview as well. “Between the road and house” seems to max out at about 15 feet, most of which is driveway and front stoop. If you put a boulder on the ground, outside of the driveway and front stoop, you’re basically putting a boulder on the edge of the road. I don’t know where these people think they could put a boulder that would both protect their house and not be right on the edge of the road, where it could be a serious hazard.
Post #29. The OP people I think are screwed for very reason their house IS so close to the road, and short of a super-reflective, sturdy wall on the property line there’s not much room for a protective device. My point is only that, generally speaking, a protective boulder is not intended to cause harm to unwary drivers, but to protect a home from irresponsible ones. I think that’s a huge distinction and it wouldn’t be lost on a jury who is going to see a frustrated homeowner and some driver bitching about how he was totally within his rights to be losing control and heading for an occupied private dwelling. For the plaintiff to prevail in that case you’d need an incredible plaintiff attorney, an incompetent defense attorney, and a jury comprised entirely of the plaintiff’s closes family members.
The first point is, accidents happen.
Secondly,the question a jury will have to answer is the reasonablemness of the “blockage” the errant driver hit.
As others pointed out, the question is “why is the boulder there?” A house or car has another purpose, it just happens to be there. The boulder would be placed in such a way as to ensure an uncontrolled vehcle hits it and stops.
Since you forsee that vehicles will hit it, and you specifically placed it there for that, you also have to consider what the outcome would be. If the logical outcome of a car hitting an obstruction you placed there is significant injury and death - then you bear part responsibility for that outcome, and can be held liable.
(Don’t forget, this is the country, though not the state, where giving someone hot coffee in a foam cup at a drivethrough makes you liable for them spilling it when they hold it between their legs going over a speed bump.)
If you picked a rock shape designed to minimize the damage… i.e. shaped to push them back on the road, say, rather than to stop them dead(??) like a brick wall; or as others said, a set of sand barrels that fail while stopping the car less abruptly, or a set of posts that fail and break off while slowing the car - then maybe your argument would have merit that you designed the situation to not injure. Putting up a solid cliff face suggests, absent other evidence, that you did design to injure. Previous accidents show that the crumple zone of cars and garage wall provide much less of a hazard than a solid block.
The moral is, when you take active steps to do something, you can be liable for the results of what you have done.
:rolleyes: Most people who hold the “McDonalds’ coffee lawsuit” up as an example of frivolous or excessive litigation are mixed up about the facts. McDonalds wasn’t held liable for the plaintiff spilling her coffee (which happened while the car was parked, btw), but rather for the fact that they had served the coffee so unnecessarily extra-hot as to constitute a serious burn hazard. Despite numerous previous complaints about scalding injuries, they had maintained a policy of extra-heating the coffee so that it would stay hot longer in the cup after being poured. If it took a notorious lawsuit to make them change that policy, then good for the lawsuit: that’s what lawsuits are for.
I think the issue is that it’s not going to be the driver bitching, it’ll be his widow. And she won’t be arguing that he was in the right, just that he didn’t deserve to die to protect the homeowners garage door.
Any boulder that is going to stop a car from hitting the house, is going to crush any car that hits it, and is going to potentially get hit by cars going past the house on the other road.
Quite a few coffee places that sell “good” coffee do in fact serve it at (IIRC from the lawsuit description) 185F to 190F. the lawyer argued that 150F was sufficient. McDonalds and many coffee experts disagree, but they were an easy target for a sweet old lady with massive crotch burns in a lawsuit-happy state.
But the case proves the point of the OP - not just that the widow may win on totally bogus grounds, but that even only partial blame can get a judgement against you.
McDonalds lost because the jury ignored the coffee experts and thought really really hot coffee was a bad idea - even though she put a soft foam cup she knew was boiling hot between her legs on a bumpy road. Even if you accept her story as valid she was 90% the author of her own misfortune, but that extra 10% - too hot - cost McD’s quite a bit. (reduced on appeal, but still a lot of lawyer fees.)
So placing a boulder may seem justified, but if it kills or severely injures someone who might not have suffered so badly if they had a nice soft parked car and wood wall to stop them - then the homeowner may end up paying for deliberately putting up a dangerous obstacle.
My aunt and uncle had a house near a point where a four-lane highway turned into a two-lane, and cars and the odd truck would occasionally come barrelling off the four-lane section way too fast and end up in their yard (and, on two occasions, in their kitchen). In their case there was a pretty big stretch of lawn between the road and the house (like 80 feet); IIRC they eventually planted some trees there, a few of which were taken out by a car strike when they were small enough to snap. The road itself has now been restructured so that it’s no longer an issue though.
She was the passenger in the car and the car was parked. The burns were 3rd degree and required skin grafts. She asked for her medical expenses and McD’s refused, by going to jury they got what they deserved.
Do these “good” coffee places serve it in a foam cup, out a window, to someone driving a car? Perhaps, when THAT is your business model, you might choose a somewhat safer temperature.
If I lived in that house I’d spend the majority of my time upstairs.
The serving model is irrelevant. She bought hot coffe. yes, rereading, the were parked, the lid apparently came loose and it sloshed on her hand. this caused her to drop the coffee, soaking the crotchal area.
If you don’t feel you did anything worng, why should you pay for someone’ s medical bills? As you can find by googling, most places -Starbucks, McD’s etc. - still serve at the 180F temperature; they just use more sturdy cups - but still does not address her problem, that a loose lid and initial slosh caused the problem; except maybe the newer lids are a tighter fit, but that makes it more likely they are not on right.
Are you suggesting that a restaurant is obliged to serve cool, badly made coffee unless it includes nice comfy chairs and free wifi? A drive through is entitled to serve the best coffee available in the industry accepted manner.
I think even by losing they made their point and it has become harder to win such cases.
However, for the OP purposes - installing an obstruction deliberately for no other purpose than to stop a car dead in a most unsafe manner can expose you to lawsuit liability. Fixing the obstruction’s design, to make that less likely, may help you escape liability.
I suspect that that house was originally much farther back from the road, and the road has encroached on the house, to where it’s such a hazard.
Back in the good old days, when the biggest hazard was a pair of oxen, a lot of houses even in small villages were built close up against the road. Then, of course, the road was widened, included a shoulder etc.
I suspect that most coffee drinkers have no idea how hot the coffee they drink actually is. I do. 170F to 180F is about what I like. 150F sucks, and if I was served coffee that cool, I’d send it back.
(On the other hand, I also 140F is painful to wash my hands in. It’s surprising what the difference is between what’s hot to my hands, and what’s hot to my mouth.)
Or shifted, if the river has been eroding the bank on the other side of the road.
I hate to support a tangent, but you’re all missing the key point of the McD’s suit. The plaintiff showed internal memos where McDonald’s had done a cost-benefit analysis of the savings in making coffee with hotter water (you need less beans to get the same flavor if you use hotter water) vs the expected potential for injury lawsuits caused by burns. They decided that since the lawsuits came out cheaper, they’d go ahead and use the hotter water.
The original jury tried to set the award high enough to re-balance the equation and make protecting customers cheaper than hurting them. The actual award paid was sustantially lower.
Now back to the OP. From the look of things, the road was widened and the bridge put in long after the house was built. (Those still confused check out drach’s google link post #27.) The only answer I can see is to move the garage to the back of the house (now’s as good a time as any! LOL!) and put in a guard rail across the existing driveway. If they move the driveway up a bit and angle it in toward the back garage, they should be OK.
Either way, the DOT owes them a darn good guardrail IMHO.
Would you please cite a sample law supporting your position here. Specifically one that supports your statement “CAN get you in trouble legally” for doing so.
Thank you.
How about Section 804c of the Bath Township [OH] Development Zoning Resolution?
I trust you don’t need a cite for the fairly obvious statement that noncompliance with zoning ordinances is illegal?
As for the liability issue, some widely distributed [legal boilerplate about risks of property ownership](property owner zoning violation liability injury) includes the following advice:
Putting up a big honking boulder right at the edge of a road in violation of setback requirements is indisputably both failing to maintain your property in compliance with zoning ordinances and creating a condition that might cause injury to someone’s property or person.
I’m stunned that so many posters seem so unwilling to believe that such a thing could get you in trouble.
McD’s point was that proper coffee required very hot water to make. They knew it caused problems, yes, but there was no solution they were willing to accept, except to pay out when they had no choice. As others have pointed out, a cup at 160F is still dangerous. Would you expect McD’s to serve cold hamburgers, for example, if that’s what was needed to avoid mouth burns? (I know they do with their Freedom Fries)
Similarly, a guard rail is a device specifically designed to crumple while slowing the vehicle. It is designed to be the best compromise between “stop” and driver safety. A chunk of rock 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide is not - in fact the opposite. Showing intent to mitigate the danger to an errant driver means you did what you could t olimit danger; putting a solid wall - not.