And today's Darwin Award contestant is...

[paulears]

You could always put in formal request for investigation to HSE and perhaps complain to the Police for them to determine if a crime had actually been committed. Keep in mind that attendance at a concert does not mean you accept the possibility of injury.

 

Smiffy - nobody seems to be speculating on why it happened as it more normal, but I would be interested to see how he stands legally - as there seems no doubt at all that he intended to drop onto the crowd to break his fall, and that decision injured someone.

 

I do now that if somebody did that to me, without me encouraging it, I'd be looking for a decent legal representative. It would be useful for the industry to see a legal precedent set to cover this kind of behaviour.

[Brian]

...put in formal request for investigation to HSE...

 

 

[PEDANT]

For leisure premises the enforcing authority will be the Local Authority.

[/PEDANT]

 

As someone was injured it'll be RIDDOR reportable so steps should already be in hand to see what/where/who/when.

[Seano]

The Facebook apology kinda sorta (I'm going to say it did, so mler) confirmed my immediate thought about this. (Where it said: "I used to be a kid who was afraid to do anything physically dangerous")

 

This is the result of modern risk-averse parenting. (Or maybe it isn't - but an incident like this has the same relationship to that that any one storm has to global warming.)

 

Here is someone who wasn't allowed to climb trees as a child. Someone who never hurt himself falling off a climbing frame, or trying (failing) to jump something on his bike. Someone who stayed in playing video games and watching movies instead. (Where you can jump out of an upstairs window and run away, and being knocked unconscious is just like taking a short nap before you wake up, shake your head and carry on with no further consequences.)

 

We, collectively, have raised an entire generation of numpties like this. We (this is very much a first-world problem, obviously), have damaged the development of a generation of kids who've never been allowed to take a risk. Yes, he was/is an idiot. But we, collectively, with our excessively risk-averse first-world western culture have been busily raising an entire generation of such idiots.

 

And enabling their continued idiocy, as they grow up out of their ridiculously risk-averse childhoods, graduate from their ridiculously risk-averse schools and move into the ridiculously risk-averse 21st century first-world workplace.

 

For the sake of humanity, stop this madness now. Take off the warning labels! Take down the handrails! Shut down the "no win no fee" lawyers and get the drama students back up stepladders, quickly, before it's too late for us all!

[Stuart91]

I'd be interested to know exactly who the HSE would/could come after, and exactly where the buck stops,

 

The other interesting aspect is that in the case of a touring artist who has come from overseas, he could be out of the country within hours and effectively out of reach. Yes, he wouldn't get a visa for a return visit, but other than that it would be possible to largely escape any consequences. (Short of extradition, but I'm not sure how high the threshold is before that's an option).

 

As Pete says, where does the buck stop?

There's a bunch of other YouTube videos of the same guy doing similar stunts at other shows, albeit nothing quite on this scale. Does that mean that the promoter should have taken extra precautions, or written something into the contract?

Do the production company share some responsibility for leaving the ladder to the truss accessible? I'd hope not...

 

Is Bernie Wooster still around the forum? It would be interesting to hear his take on this situation.

 

Keep in mind that attendance at a concert does not mean you accept the possibility of injury.

 

At certain styles of concert, with lively mosh pits, "circle of death" etc. etc. there might reasonably be some expectation of the possibility of minor injury. (Has anyone ever sued for being trampled at a thrash metal gig?)

 

However, nobody would reasonably foresee somebody diving from that height onto them. A standard stage dive, running off the stage and leaping over the barrier, is a relatively common feature. Leaping from 12m is not, it's completely out of the ballpark in terms of risk. It's like the difference between spraying water or spraying acid over the crowd.

[kerry davies]

Agreed, Seano. Pre-HASAWA work was a dangerous place and we needed it's protection. Post Legal Services Acts of the 80's the culture became Americanised; "I am hurting, someone else is to blame, who can I sue, money fixes everything." Risk aversion by its nature prevents experience and practise which are two thirds of competence.

 

The professionals can fly people over the audience and drop them out of the sky but they perform a risk assessment from a position of competence, how many of the younger ones have that necessary awareness? It isn't so much idiocy as ignorance and innocence.

 

What I think is behind your post is that we have delayed the learning curve which used to start extremely young and now kids in their late teens and early twenties are where my step-children were at three years of age. Toddlers learning not to fall.

They all got to be very good at it and today Social Services would be round checking the bruises, daily.

 

Hang on Stuart, stage diving is not OK and is illegal in some countries. Check this out!

 

Mosh pit safety is an ongoing field of study by world leading academics and universities on both sides of the pond.

 

If as is hinted in his apology this has been common during this tour it suggests that the venues, promoters, production and security crews were all aware in advance. That places them all at risk of prosecution.

 

If Mr Wooster is still working where he was he will be made aware of this since it is on a PSA site. They speak to each other on a regular basis. He will probably not be able to comment as I imagine the legal eagles would also be alerted.

 

We need to stop thinking in terms of where the buck stops. In civil cases where damages are apportioned it means just that, apportioned. In this case if the venue, production company, artiste and promoters knew what was going to happen a Million Pound payout might be proportionally set out as 50% artiste, 20% production, 20% promoter and 10% venue responsibility. It all depends on where the judge places the weight of responsibility even though he will "follow the money" to an extent. Basically the buck stops here, with each of us.

[Andrew C]

I remember a gig with John Otway & WW Barret. One of them was prone to climbing speaker stacks... Result could have been very similar, or a lot worse!

[Stuart91]

Hang on Stuart, stage diving is not OK and is illegal in some countries. Check this out!

 

I only said it was commonplace. No endorsement of the practice should be implied. ;)

 

Basically the buck stops here, with each of us.

 

I think what a lot of us are worrying about, reading this story, is what steps we might be expected to take to prevent this sort of thing happening. If the onus falls on the production company to ensure there's nothing left accessible for the talent to climb, that's a lot of extra effort and labour, which doubtless the clients won't want to foot the bill for.

 

Yes there are some easy, reasonable steps that can be taken. I know of one marquee company that grease their poles when they are doing student balls, so people can't get a grip and climb up them. But can you imagine how cumbersome it would be to make an entire ground support truss structure unclimbable? Plus you'd need to have a way around the measures so the crew can get access as required.

 

This is where it would be very valuable to have someone with enough H&S litigation knowledge to be able to say "it's unlikely that H&S would come after the production company in a situation like this unless..." and set out some of the likely parameters. I know that every situation is different, but some general guidance would be really useful.

 

I'm not really doing the kind of shows where this sort of behaviour occurs regularly, but you do get the occasional fruitcake. One particularly memorable incident was during a student ball, where a drunk guy managed to get all the way up a tent pole, and performed a striptease of sorts, removing almost all his clothing and throwing it onto the crowd below. We weren't quite sure what the best course of action was - should we kill the sound and tell him to come down? Our worry was that an unscheduled interruption would lead to more trouble, and also focus more attention on him as the star of the show. It didn't help that the organisers of the event were in the crowd, cheering him on...

 

Eventually our hero got bored and slid back down the pole, a far trickier proposition without trousers. I'm sure he got a few splinters in places you would not want splinters. He didn't notice the festoon hanging from the pole, and managed to catch on it, giving himself a robust wedgie, and tumbled the last ~8ft onto the floor. No serious damage done, although his clothes had mysteriously disappeared and he was left dancing in his briefs for the rest of the evening.

 

Now, it's not hard to envisage a far worse outcome. If he'd got tangled in his trousers, and fallen from the top of the pole, there would have been a decent chance of serious injury. If something like this were to happen today, would the onus be on us to prove we had taken steps to contain the situation, or the automatic assumption is we're responsible for the actions of a drunken, stripteasing fool?

[ImagineerTom]

I don't see this occurrence having the massive impact that some are fearing - there were 2 muck-ups here; the talent and the producers.

 

the talent shouldn't be climbing things and hurling himself at strangers

the producers should have known of his predilection for jumping off things and taken some REALLY BASIC steps like not leaving an access ladder out, on stage, unprotected around people who like to show off.

 

I can see the producers getting a slapped wrist because they were stupid and didn't take a sensible precaution (stowing away the ladder) but because what the talent did was so extreme, so stupid and so unusual I can't see there being any change in existing legislation or recommendations.

 

Stuart91 - industry best practise, standard practice and indeed required practice at just about every music/dance festival is for kingpoles and anything else that drunk people have an urge to climb being made suitably anti-climb. We travel with sleeves that wrap around the bottom of our kingpoles making them unclimbable, other operators built wooden structures right out from the poles and one company even has "overhangs" 2m up on their poles precisely so you can't climb up them.

[BlueShift]

This is unbelievable and completely ridiculous.

 

I hope someone gets charged, and the injured punters sue. Please sue.

 

This isn't casual stage diving from the Mojo, this is jumping off a f$%&ing advance lighting truss! I cannot possibly see an outcome from this that wouldn't result in massive injury to someone!

 

Ultimately:

1) Attending an event shouldn't force you to take the risk of this kind of injury.

2) The promoter/venue is legally liable for the safety of the crowd, and they hold a contract with the artist. The injured audience members need to sue the promoter (who can then sue the artist)

3) I suspect, if legal action was taken, that the offending 'artist' could be charged with some kind of negligence/reckless endangerment.

 

This guy is clearly an idiot. No stupid Facebook sob story bulls&^t can make up for this. Don't blame your upbringing! Blame your idiotic decision making!

 

/rant

[J Pearce]

It is reasonable to prevent audience members from climbing structures (by placing boards over ladders, lifting rope ladders, fencing off areas etc.).

It is perhaps arguable that performers as contractors working on a supplied structure should not require idiot-proof structures in the same manner. As a contractor they are responsible for their safety and those around them (as are the audience actually). If they are not capable of doing that why are we allowing them on our stages?

[Stuart91]

industry best practise, standard practice and indeed required practice at just about every music/dance festival is for kingpoles and anything else that drunk people have an urge to climb being made suitably anti-climb. We travel with sleeves that wrap around the bottom of our kingpoles making them unclimbable

 

That makes a lot of sense. (And a neater solution than greasing the poles, if somewhat less amusing to watch). However, as Jon points out, keeping drunken punters at bay is one thing, and completely idiot proofing the stage is an entirely different proposition.

 

I guess what bothers me about this whole situation is the knock-on cost that everyone incurs because idiots can't be held responsible for their actions. For an enormous dance festival in a big top, precautions to stop climbing make perfect sense and aren't a huge cost in the grand scheme of things. However if incidents like this continue to generate publicity, it won't be long before smaller and smaller events get similar conditions imposed upon them, perhaps by over-cautious local authority officials.

 

Something like a wedding reception in a traditional marquee - the crowd, in general, will be less impaired and better behaved than at a rave, but you could still get the "drunken uncle" who wants to show off his acrobatic skills. It's a "foreseeable" risk, so does something need done about it? Where do you stop? I've worked at one wedding reception which degenerated into a mass brawl. Should the tables and chairs be nailed to the floor to prevent them being used as weapons in such circumstances? We are maybe talking one event out of a hundred where these kinds of things would be an issue, but in terms of probability I don't think that's much rarer than an artist climbing a truss ladder and jumping from 12 metres up. And the suggestion there is that the lighting company should share some of the blame for leaving a ladder accessible to him...

 

My son is currently two and a bit years old. When he started to walk I had to make a point of not leaving things like Sharpies or tools lying around the house. I certainly wouldn't let him wander around in my workshop, or on a concert stage. He's immature and we have a duty of care towards him. But if a grown adult wandered into my workshop and decided that the sensible thing to do is feed his hand into my table saw, is it my fault for leaving it accessible? Maybe if I left it sitting in the street, powered up, at pub emptying time. But somebody coming into their place of work, and doing something incredibly, unforeseeably stupid, and dodges some of the responsibility because something isn't kept out of their reach? That's essentially the situation we have here with this fool and the truss ladder.

[top-cat]

WTF!

 

Even if the audience hadn't 'parted' people would have been killed or seriously injured. And who on earth at the rigging company decided it was a good idea to leave the ladder down? Someone on the production side deserves to go to jail for this.

 

 

 

Why shouldn't they? I don't think it's unreasonable to leave access equipment in place, in production-only areas; for speed and ease of access in necessity. You can't expect production companies to idiot proof everything in case an artist decides to be a fool. Although, having said that, on major festival stages I have seen the stage builders wrapping the bottom 2-3m of the tower legs to stop the artists climbing up them.

 

I just think that whilst truss towers are an obvious climbing frame for intoxicated artists, no rigger or rigging company could foresee somebody climbing a caving ladder to a FOH truss and jumping off it.

 

Nobody deserves to go to jail. Apart from perhaps the idiot who jumped off. But hopefully his high speed rendezvous with the concrete floor of Ally Pally will have served him enough of a reminder as to why it's normally frowned upon. If production neglect to put handrails around the stage edges and somebody wheels a flight case off the side which lands on somebody, then yes someone should get in trouble. It is obvious that high stages need handrails. But you really don't need to put the stages into lockdown on every gig, or fear jail. That's just silly. You can't expect the production to knock every possible way of injuring yourselves or others into touch, just because "it could happen".

 

Also Seano's point on the nanny state is bang on the money. It's the old thing that 'curiosity killed the cat' and no matter how many times you tell somebody they shouldn't do something, they will always get around to doing it at some point because we are inquisitive people. It's mad. A mate of mine is LAS (London Ambulance Service) and he said to me throughout freshers week they deal with students with burnt hands because they'd never used an oven before and didn't realise the baking trays got hot... because they're so used to everything being made safe. There is an assumption among many that the baking tray won't be hot because surely in this day and age we wouldn't deliberately make a device which would injure you when handled. (The fact that the baking tray being hot is what cooks the food is overlooked). As Seano said, we need to let people start hurting themselves again, because if we continue trying to make every act, from breathing to crossing the road; to be completely safe and risk-free, then people will continuously push the boat out farther and farther to injure themselves!

[Smiffy]

Smiffy - nobody seems to be speculating on why it happened as it more normal, but I would be interested to see how he stands legally - as there seems no doubt at all that he intended to drop onto the crowd to break his fall, and that decision injured someone

 

Wha'd I say? http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif

 

Legally, who knows. I'd like to hope that In this situation, the person responsible for the front truss ladder gets a light rap on the knuckles and nothing more from HSE, and that they go to town on the 'Artiste'. If I was on a truss without a harness and the HSE caught me, I'd be in the ######. This dude climbed the truss, seemingly with every intention to jump on to people, with the inevitable result being to cause mass injury. At the very least, borderline criminal negligence on his part. Possibly even ABH.

 

 

At a large Metal Festival this year I was LD for one of the stages, an act were scheduled at our stage, wherein the lead singer is known for having a penchant for climbing the legs of the roof. Promoter arrives at the stage in the morning for a swift Production Meeting, and lo, 10 minutes later, the legs are all being visqueened up to about 8', and at the time this act goes on stage, some pretty hefty security chaps are placed at the foot of each leg. Promoter has made it clear that if he climbs, it's a show stop. No if's, but's, or maybes'. Show stop.

 

My point being, that if this guy, as has been claimed in some circles, is known for doing stupid stage dives, then the promoters responsibility is to pass that information on to his crew whom one would expect to then take reasonable precautions to protect their own rears. If this guy wants to kill himself, great, carry on, but not with my kit. I seriously believe however that nobody would ever have predicted an artist using a caving ladder to climb to the truss to perform a stage dive however.

 

As for the ladder hanging down, we've all done it. Yes, generally we try and ensure that it's at least swagged back with the multi's, but there are days when you forget to put the Shiv's in or the rope, or something gets tangled, and come show time, everyone is over it. So everyone getting holier than thou on the ladder front, wind your necks in. you know damn well that that could have been you. If you've never toured in the 'rock' styleee and are passing comment. Then you can definitely wind your neck in.

 

I know people that were/are involved in this tour, and I'm not looking forward to seeing the fall out. From their perspective, or from the HSE's.

 

 

Cheers

 

 

Smiffy

 

 

 

[kerry davies]

Stuart, think of it like this. When we have young people or disabled people working with us we make a more stringent RA taking into account the inexperience and abilities of those involved. In this case the actions of the artist were known from experience and the RA should have reflected that knowledge. We are not expected to take the same higher level precautions every time for all people in all circumstances, we would never hold another gig under those conditions.

 

Just as your saw should have some sort of guarding in a shared workplace and you restrict access to your two year old we need to consider restrictions and guarding for each occasion. So we restrict access to the stage (workplace) to specified workers only and we guard the public against hazardous machinery and practices. As long as we take the precautions that a reasonable man would take we have fulfilled our duty of care.

 

The question is; would a reasonable man allow the artist to leap into the audience once that man knew it was likely to happen? I think the answer is no and the ladders should be taken out/a quiet word had with the artist/a showstop used as the ultimate sanction .... whatever needs doing. (Cross wiv Smiffy, spot on that promoter.)

 

As an aside to this topic it comes at an interesting time as CDM is under consultation. If CDM does enter our field in 2014/15 and applied to this incident, one single person would be made responsible. Would that responsibility make that person more cautious? Is it a good thing to have one person in overall control of safety? Would our industry actually accept the authority of that one person with whom the buck really does stop? Is it time the industry "grew up" and took a mature attitude to these things, just as other industries have had to? I dunno, I've retired.

[Stuart91]

Stuart, think of it like this. When we have young people or disabled people working with us we make a more stringent RA taking into account the inexperience and abilities of those involved.

 

Indeed, and it's an admirable endeavour to make the stage accessible to people who otherwise could not take part. However, their disabilities are presumably outwith their control. I'm sure they are not choosing to be wheelchair bound, for instance.

 

How would you feel about having to build a complicated wheelchair ramp, add additional handrail, or fill in a pit, not because you have a genuine wheelchair user, but an able-bodied person who has a fetish about being wheeled around in one? (And yes, I have worked at an event that had several audience members behaving like this)

 

The rapper diving from the truss is clearly in full control of his faculties, he's not doing this because of a psychiatric condition, he should know better. Anyone with the slightest ounce of common sense would have told that it was a bad idea.

 

My argument is that when someone of sound mind decides to do something as incredibly stupid as this, the responsibility should fall on them and them alone. For a lighting company to suffer a ~£200k hit (to follow your earlier example) seems grossly unfair. It's almost reminiscent of the American system, where after the Station Nightclub fire, JBL settled out of court because they couldn't prove that their speakers burning didn't contribute to the smoke that the victims suffered.

 

In this case the actions of the artist were known from experience and the RA should have reflected that knowledge. We are not expected to take the same higher level precautions every time for all people in all circumstances, we would never hold another gig under those conditions.

 

I'm not arguing against being prepared when you know there might be a problem. Smiffy's example is a good one, the burly security guarding each truss is a nice touch. However, in the context of that sort of scale of event, the money and effort to achieve it is relatively trivial. Four stewards for the duration of a set is nothing compared to the total number on site.

 

My problem is that I operate a smallish mobile stage, which has a vertical truss in each corner. So far, no unauthorised person has tried to climb them. But we do a lot of events featuring local or unknown bands. It's usually a struggle to even get a note of the line-up, never mind a proper rider or a heads-up about any unruly behaviour. The vast vast majority of bands are perfectly OK, but you get the occasional problem.

 

In this situation, my risk assessment would state a very small chance of occurring, but potentially serious consequences. Again, we're talking a very very small fraction of bands who would even attempt this - perhaps 0.5% or less. But if we get more incidents in the news, I don't doubt that some local authorities will start demanding measures are taken, not because of any quantifiable risk, but because the media attention has put it on their radar.