Insurance

[Nibbly]

At Moote's suggestion I'm posting this here as well as on the Groundspeak forums:

I've just had a nice letter from my local town council giving me permission to place my first cache on council owned land on a six month trial basis. I am a little knocked down, however, by their request "for your confirmation of insurance that you hold to undertake this activity." Given that the area is frequented by dog walkers, kite flyers, footballers etc who I am sure are all un-insured for their activities I am at a loss as how to respond. My understanding is that for an activity such as geocaching any public liability is on the head of the participant and without being rude to the council I have no idea what to say that doesn't come across as "stop being really stupid!". Help please.

Many thanks

Mr Nibbler

[markandlynn]

link (https://www.gagb.org.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=584)
Youl get fed up of me soon :D
I can forward the correspondence if you contact me through our profile.

[The Wombles]

Many landowners ask the same question and we've had this debate often. The bottom line is that there is no insurance, GC.com and GAGB don't carry this insurance, and if a landowner insists on insurance then you'll just have to keep working on them until they accept that the risk is minimal and little different to the usual situation. In one case this took me one year.

We asked a broker some time ago for a quote for any injury resulting from an unattended box which could be found by anyone on someone else's (publicly accessible) property. They laughed.

The line which we use in such negotiations is that geocaches are placed by an individual to be found by individuals. It is not organised as such, although the location details are listed. Reasonable care must be taken by the owner and finders (as described in the various disclaimers on GC.com) and if a problem is identified then it is the responsibility of the owner to take appropriate action such as suspending the cache, visiting or in the worse case, archiving.

in practice the landowners have invariably accepted that the risk is little more than any other resulting from public visitors. You can see a list of these on the landowners agreements list - it's all the ones that have given permission, including the Forestry Commission, various County Councils and other authorities.

There is no magic answer for this but most of our agreements have come from persistence.

[MCL]

...or you could take the pessimistic view and reckon that they are saying this to you as a way of saying "no" without saying "no".

ie they know full well you will not be able to come up with the insurance goods, so they have effectively made you go away and stop pestering them....


cynical or wot?

[Tigger]

You could always show them the disclaimer that is linked from every cache page:

https://www.geocaching.com/about/disclaimer.aspx

It's mainly a disclaimer for groundspeak but the relevant phrase is 'Cache seekers assume all risks involved in seeking a cache.'

There would be nothing stopping you from stating the pharse in the cache description or iinserting a small disclaimer on the cache page on the council's behalf.

[paul.blitz]

Another thing to consider is whether the risk is actually insurable? As I understand it, if a person or an organisation is *not responsible* for something, then they can't insure the risk.

This issue came up with the New Forest negotiations.... if you think about it, what is GAGB&#39;s liability for a cache placed by <unknown person #1> and found by <unknown person #2>, who promptly injures themslef? The answer can only be "there IS none"&#33;. GAGB doesn&#39;t place caches, it doesn&#39;t directly know about them, it doesn&#39;t approve them.

So *is* there any responsibility for *you* when you place a cache on someone-elses land, to be found by <unknown person>? I don&#39;t know... you&#39;d have to ask an insurance broker & a lawyer.

Of course, if you own the land, then there is no doubt that you ARE responsible.


But, as others have pointed out, is caching particularly more dangerous than walking the dog & retrieving a lost ball? (ok, yes, SOME caches ARE&#33;&#33;&#33; but most aren&#39;t&#33;&#33;&#33;)


Paul

[Nibbly]

All sorted - many thanks all. :D