(04-03-2015, 04:15 PM)c iom tt Wrote: But what if as in the case of this House owner, they dont give consent for it to be a restricted area, and a bike damages there property in an accident. and causes personal injury when the ocupiers are going about there normal day to day routine, (family barbaque etc) the the ACU and its insurance would still have to pay up?
I would it would be a different situation if the land owners were charging people to watch from there ( Conker feilds for example), but as I have posted previously, this has a potential knock on effect for a good part of the course.

I've always been a bit nervous about this, as a lawyer, because when you think about it in elf and safety terms a person is perfectly entitled to occupy their property and go about their lawful business, If you do a risk assessment the risk all stems from the race activity and if the organisers can't ensure that the bikes (or more probably subarus) can operate without endangering householders then they need to modify or cease the activity or install adequate safety measures. You can't pass responsibility for a danger you create onto an innocent third party. The problem here is that they have, in effect, decided that there are areas which are unsafe and designated them in effect admitting they can't control the risk they are creating. Now, if this was to happen 'Across', then the property owner would go and get an injunction against the organiser because at the end of the day the races are just people having fun and it is easy for the organisers to make it 100% safe by not racing.  Its like you taking up archery and telling your neighbour that if you shoot his mother in law in the garden its at his risk and he should not use his garden or insure against it (or do a risk assessment and pile some sandbags up and have you pay to have him trained to be more accurate). of course Manx courts are a law unto themselves so anything could happen but all the insurance will be done under english law in an english court, I would have thought that a householder writing to the organiser pointing out that they were having a garden party on raceday and pointing out it is the ACUs duty not to carry out activities which would endanger them would put the wind up the insurance company, a property owners right to free enjoyment of his property would almost certainly 'trump' another party's right to interfere with those rights in the name of sport and making money. What was needed when they made the legislation re the prohibited areas was to be able to declare them without the owners consent but they would have been told that they would have been liable to pay compensation to the landowners, in deciding not to do that they have left themselves in a very sticky situation, its a good job the island isn't part of the EU and hasn't got the Human Rights nonsense we have here otherwise the races would be over.
I do agree that landowners charging the public are in a different boat though