There is a terrible death in San Francisco that reads like a perverse torts exam question on factual and legal causation. Barber Luis Gomez, it can be argued, was almost killed by permissive public urination in the city (an issue that we recently discussed with regard to the effort to decriminalize public urination in New York). Gomez, 40, was killed during his commute from a suburb into the city. Because the BART was done, he drove his 1994 Honda Civic into the city. He was then crushed by a falling light pole that officials blamed on human and animal urine corroding its base.
Gomez was on his way home and was stopped at a light with his son in the back of the car and a friend in the passenger seat. The three-story metal light pole, with the street sign attached, crushed the car.
Notably, the problem is not simply the growing problem of public urination in San Francisco but the lack of rain to rain off such surfaces. Combined with the declining number of rest rooms, the level of public urination is on the rise. As we discussed recently, various cities are trying innovative means to combat the problem.
The causal link from a failure to stop public urination to the corrosion of a lamp post to the crushing of a car is clearly a bit attenuated for tort liability. It is reminiscent of the case of Berry v. Sugar Notch Borough, 43 A. 240 (Pa. 1899) where a street car exceeded the legal limit of eight mile per hour and ended up being crushed by a falling chestnut tree. Had it not speeded, it would not have been under the tree but the court rules that it was not actionable and the violation of the statute was a coincidence and not the cause of the incident.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Olly, Anyone who has metal beach deck chairs or beach cruiser bikes can attest to the corrosive ocean air. Bikes are rusty within a few months.
The problem is both encouraging the homeless to live and defecate/urinate on the public street, AND the city failing to inspect, and possibly installing the incorrect type of light pole for the corrosive sea environment. It has also been accurately pointed out that dogs legally urinate on light poles, anyway, so these need to be inspected before they smash someone else.
Karen – I would think the homeless would randomly pee on the pole, not all pee at the same spot. It is not like they have a “Pee Here” sign. This also goes for dogs, who come in different sizes and who pee at different heights. I think they are going to have to put up PVC.
Actually, Olly is correct. The Cloud Condensation Nucleus can, indeed, be salt. I live in So Cal and once worked by the ocean. There was a lot of corrosion of cars of people who lived there. They didn’t drive their cars into the ocean; the salt was just in the air. You know that phrase, “I can smell the salt air”? It’s based on fact. You’re thinking about steam distillation.
http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/fog/about.html
http://www.flcaj.com/pdfdocs/salt%20air%20.pdf
Paul C.
Can I quote you on your first line above?
“I am not a scientist and I do not play one on TV, but …”
Max-1 – I think I stole it from somebody. 😉 You can steal from me.
I am not a scientist and I do not play one on TV, but I do not see why there would not be salt naturally in the moisture in the air and in the fog of San Francisco. Still, it is a sanctuary city so surely they have a labor force they can hire to check the light poles. Opps! Didn’t they raise their minimum wage. It is going to cost them a little more then.
And so the story is written… blame the homelessness for a city’s failure to inspect it’s infrastructure.
“Water vapor evaporating from the ocean is all around the Bridge and often cools and condenses to form fog. Corrosion is sped up by the presence of salt. The sea air around the Bridge not only supplies the water needed for rust — it is also loaded with millions of tiny particles of salt.”
http://www.goldengate.org/exhibits/exhibitarea1e.php
Palsey Schultz,
LOL! Sure, there is no salt present; it’s all purified water vapor that gently refreshes every surface it touches.
Olly: There’s no salt content in fog, genius. It’s vapor, like your comments. Sail on.
“There’s no salt content in fog, genius. It’s vapor, like your comments. Sail on.”
I found the issue of salt in the atmosphere an interesting question. Many sites on the internet state confidently that salt (NACL) can’t evaporate (at least not at the usual temperatures we encounter) so there is no salt in air.
Apparently the situation is a bit more complex than that.
Here is a NOAA web page that briefly discusses sea salt aerosols in the atmosphere:
http://www.arl.noaa.gov/faq_ac18.php
Here is another cite to a section of a corrosion engineering text book that discusses techniques for measuring air borne chlorides:
http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Corrosion-Atmospheric/Measurements-factors.htm
Apparently salt from salty water (the ocean or salt lake) or from anti icing materials does get into the air and can be transported some distance; and when deposited on metal can be extremely corrosive.
Salt does not evaporate with water but there are other forces that distribute salt and chlorides into the atmosphere creating corrosion in metals and problems for people who depend on metal.
Chief Consort at 8:25 am
Funny and sad.
Are the voters “Pissed off yet”!
There are far more important things in our Blessed Blue Cities (PBUT) than corroded lampposts, or, in Philadelphia, which has had 2,019 sinkholes so far in 2015 (up 20% from last year), roughly one sinkhole every mile of city road.
Ensuring the takeover of California by Mexican migrants and paying the highest pensions for city workers in the nation are much more crucial than infrastructure.
With some of the comments above, I can’t always tell whether the writer is being serious or facetious.
Being serious for a moment, corroding street furniture is a sign of poor maintenance. The voters should pose searching questions at City Hall. Is the Board of Supervisors letting the streets fall into lethal state of disrepair?
SF is a great city. But, the permissiveness is going to ruin it. NYC is headed back to the 70’s w/ a permissive mayor. Our city of Madison has a very liberal mayor, Paul Soglin. The guy was an anti Viet Nam peace protester. He is trying to have some COMMON SENSE rules for homeless people and is being vilified by the new wave liberals, educated @ the U. of WI. w/ PC, speech codes, microagression teaching and all the horseshit that is infecting our culture. There have to be rules! And, they have to be enforced. They need to be fair rules, humane rules, but they must exist.
This is also a coastal city which routinely gets bathed in a dense fog. The corrosive effects of that salt air has to be taken into account.
The occasional car crushed by a corroded lamppost is a small price to pay for the freedom of the homeless to urinate where they please.
Same for defecation, which should be unfettered as a matter of social justice.
Just let your little used Honda take one for the team.
Was he an illegal alien? I hear their spicy foods make their pee acidic.
So far, no comments which blame the dogs. Peeing on a pants leg of someone at the bus stop is a better thing to do for all concerned. Peeing on the light pole has foreseeable consequences. We dogs only live 14 years or so. Generally a pole wont rust out in our lifetime but our kids might see it go down.
This looks like another invitation for every sleaze ball lawyer to pony up. Stuff degrades and if there is a commonly known reason for something to degrade and it is ignored then those who should have been monitoring the situation are at fault. Other than this it is nothing more than making money.
The corrosion effects of urine and the public facilities is well known and easily documented.
“three-story metal light pole”
A bit of googling suggest this incident was foreseeable and preventable. From the web site of a manufacture of light poles and bases:
“Aluminum will last longer than steel, fiberglass or wood poles. Aluminum light poles have been in use for over 50 years, and many of the original installations are still in service.
Galvanized steel will vary by the quality of galvanizing. Even the best quality may start to show rust after 5-7 years. Appearance will be the initial objection, but structural deterioration will occur in the years that follow.
Bare steel is not acceptable. Painted steel may begin rusting around the base and in areas that are scratched in the first year of use. Many painted steel poles will rust through and become structurally dangerous in less than ten (10) years.”
It seems to me that any organization that installs steel poles and bases would know, or should know, the poles and bases have to be inspected on a regular basis to insure safety.
Proper inspection and maintenance would have prevented this accident regardless of the level of urination or rain. Further, the more the agency argues that lack of rain was a factor the more they raise the question why they did not increase inspection schedules to assure safety.
Looks like an easy win for the family of the deceased to me.
street lights don’t get annual electical inspections? So No one noticed any corrosion? Was it one of those weak light poles purposely put around airfields (so errant planes knock em over instead of shearing fuel laden wings)? Piss on it ….i don’t buy it. If this is the ‘case’ how can composting toilets (which aren’t meant to be rinsed) have pipes with a 30 year warranty? Plastic? And the anti petro ppl want us to piss up corn plastic? So since no one ever painted and maintained the light poles…….this is too ridiculous to believe.