UKTC Archive

-----Original Message-----
From: TREECISION (Julian Forbes) [mailto:treecision@xxxxx.co.uk]
Sent: 23 January 2002 16:17
To: uktc@xxxxxxxxx.co.uk
Subject: Re: Water Uptake

Jerry -

 

(going back to the original case, perhaps the geezer only got 5 years rather than 10 because he did not know about the thin skull?)

 

I may be wrong, but I thought that the issue related to charge not plea: the defence claimed that the bloke died due a thin skull, thus the accused should stand trial for manslaughter in that homicide could not have been intended, ie he only hit the victim hard enough to, say, knock out a man of normal skull thickness, and was therefore not trying to kill, premeditation needing to be shown for a charge of murder to stick. The prosecution maintained that it was murder as he did intend to hit him and the chap did die from the punch and not, say, from his head hitting the pavement.

 

Either way, I think you're right that the judge ruled for the more serious outcome. I may well be confused with something else, probably off the telly.

 

With trees though, if you have a building standard in place (NHBC 4.2) and a house is not built according to it and then falls down, shouldn't the actual cause of the collapse be irrelevant? If it blew down would this be an act of God? No doubt the insurance company would say so! I wonder who the survivor of the Three Little Pigs massacre sued, or did they build their own houses?

 

Whatever, I recall someone's doom-laden words on this subject: the tree may not be the problem, but it might be part of the solution, though I'm a re-hydration advocate where possible.

 

Julian.