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The Sugarland disaster, should we have insurance for concerts.


CTStump

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This was a horrible accident and the aftermath is starting to make the news. Do you think it's necessary to get concert insurance for fans to be taken out in the Midwest for outdoor concerts. How as band can this tragedy be foreseen, usually road crews are hired by the management or contracted out locally and it would seem to me a hard situation to stay on top of. It's a sad affair all the same and hopefully will be resolved with all due process and speed. :cry:

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Here's the quote I found interesting from that story:

 

"The incident at issue in this litigation resulted from a gust of wind of unprecedented intensity, which caused a structure that may have been improperly designed, maintained andor inspected to fail. As such, this was a true accident or Act of God," the response states."

 

So is an "improperly designed, maintained andor inspected [structure]" an Act of God or accident? Granted, it said MAY have been improperly designed, but still...

 

This case is going to go on for a long time, I think. Sugarland will say they didn't need to cancel the concert because they believed the stage structure could withstand the weather. The stage people will say it was not capable of withstanding weather of that intensity, and Sugarland should have canceled the concert. Ultimately, none of it will bring back the people who died, but hopefully the fallout will prevent this from happening in the future.

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..."

 

 

There's the key phrase right there.

 

A few years back I was hired as an expert witness in a case where metal panels came off buildings in downtown Houston during a hurricane and caused some injuries and damage. The injured parties blamed the building owner who blamed the panels which were certified for a certain wind speed, the panel manufacturer blamed the installer, the installer said the panels were installed to spec and either the materials must have been defective or the windspeed exceeded the rating in which case it was an act of God.

 

The whole case turned on what the speed of the wind gusts were, and how sustained they were.

 

There was no recording of wind speeds at the building location, only at various locations around Houston (airport, TV station, etc) all fairly close to the rated wind speed for the panels. Downtown Houston, as you might guess, is a "concrete canyon" and estimating windspeed in the canyons is really complex even if you had a complete record of windspeeds from fairly nearby.

 

That was my job, to estimate the peak gusts and give a 95% confidence interval around the predicted value. And of course the "other side" had their own expert too.

 

This case will come down to the same, I think. If the wind speed was far above anything the various contractors could reasonably have expected and they did their job in the usual, accepted fashioned, I'd say they're off the hook. Otherwise, ipso facto they are negligent since it clearly did come apart and cause great harm.

 

Terry D.

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