Rougham Negotiatations

[Tiger-Eyes]

My Landlord is a pretty important bloke round here and owns the majority of the local area (properties as well as land) he seems quite keen to allow geocaches to be placed on his land and does a lot to encourage locals and visiters to walk the local area BUT he is very concerned about the health and safety implications of caching, ie if someone hurts themselves on his land will they sue him. The area has no official foot paths just trails that he himself has set up. He wants something that both he and myself can sign to basically cover himself. Have we got a basic landowner agreement that we can both sign that would cover this?
Fiona

[nobbynobbs]

Fiona, it sounds like a cop out but I would suggest he contacts a lawyer or insurance company to make sure he has public liability insurance to cover the people who already walk on his land.
Anyone caching will not incur any extra risk onto him as he already is duty bound to make sure that the paths are safe.

As regards any specific agreement, I would shy away as I'm no lawyer but once we start actual disclaimers that we can't really enforce we are asking for trouble.
It would need every potential cacher to sign it!

But like I said he needs basic cover anyway and I can't see we'd increase the need more than is already there.

[Bill D (wwh)]

I agree with Matt. If your landlord's got public liability insurance then he's covered by it, and if he hasn't he really ought to take some out. You could also perhaps point out that cachers are generally experienced walkers and users of the countryside, so are maybe less at risk than many casual users of his land.

You could also mention gc.com's disclaimer that a cacher seeks a cache at his or her own risk, though how that would actually stand up under English law I'm not sure!

Good luck with your negotiations!