The presidential elbow.

• Author: Perry, William J.
• Position: Potential liability suits - President's page

About 3 weeks ago, I slipped while attempting a "run" on a (rather good) temporary cricket pitch at Rancho Las Palmas at the IADC Midyear Meeting. As a result I sustained a badly broken humerus which has required surgery. In English terms, I have suffered relatively little pain and suffering and if rehabilitation is not completed it will be largely my own fault for not doing physiotherapy properly; in Californian terms, I think I have suffered serious trauma, I shall probably never have the courage to play cricket again and my personal and social life will accordingly be seriously restricted even if I do recover full flexion in the arm.

The question, of course, is: who should I sue? A number of targets present themselves. First, of course, are those who prepared the cricket pitch on which I slipped. It seems self-evident that the grass was not properly cut, was left too wet and slippery for cricket after watering or was in some way uneven or otherwise predisposed to make me trip. There is the man who called on me to run: he should have noticed that ! was not properly poised ready to run and that the sudden effort needed to do so would mean I had to make a desperate effort of the type likely to lead to accidents of this nature. Perhaps it was my shoes: obviously they did not grip the ground as they should have done (running is obviously something trainers should be made to take into account when their soles are designed). And so the list could go on.

Fortunately for all concerned, I am a reasonably phlegmatic person prepared to accept that accidents sometimes happen and that with the best will in the world people occasionally trip up just because that is what happens. I am not proposing to sue anyone. But the fact that it is so easy to reel off a serious list of potential defendants and reasons for suing them is symptomatic of a serious ill in our (by which I mean the whole of what is usually called "the Western World") society.

We live in a "blame culture." People are, far too often, unwilling to accept that life is a series of risks, that risk taking is something which the young have to be taught (perhaps failing to teach them is itself a cause of action against parents and/or schools?) and that, even when everything has been done properly, accidents and/or damage/loss will sometimes occur for which no one other than one's self can be blamed.

This is actually a sick society. It is part of the same malaise which means that parents no longer...