Every single correct answer was, "the climber." Some were obvious, such as a climber decides to free solo and falls. Others were less obvious, like a belayer drops his climber. One was a piece of equipment fails due to a manufacturer defect.

This is just retarded. I sure as hell expect my gear to hold what they are rated for, and if not, I find the manufacturer liable. Sure, as a climber I know there are risks with everything, and therefore I try to build redundancy into everything, but it does not remove the manufacturer's responsibility.

Not that this has anything to do with this particular case, as I think we all agree that the manufacturer is not at fault here.

It is not "retarded". The day anyone but the person climbing is responsible for any risk associated with their climbing is the day the sport dies from my perspective.

If you choose to leave the ground you and you alone are responsible for any and all risk associated with that action - equipment selection / inspection / maintenance / use, partner selection and monitoring, environmental and rock conditions, etc.

No one but you is responsible for your safety on rock and that is the way I hope it will always be. Failure to check the fitness of your equipment is your fault.

This is all more obvious in skydiving where they are very clear about who is going to get killed if the person who jumps out of a plane doesn't maintain total responsibility and control over every piece of equipment they use - they trust no one.

So you pull test every piece of pro you buy to 1/2 strength or something? When I pay 60 bucks for a cam that has a couple dollars worth of raw material in it, what I'm really paying for is the certification and quality of build. If I can't be 99.99999% certain that it isn't going to fail under a small load, it's useless and defective. This line of logic is akin to saying, hey, if you get in your new car and they forgot to put break fluid in it, tough luck if you die. You knew people die in cars every day. NO, the car was defective and not built/prepped properly. Absolving manufacturers/belayers/etc. of any responsibility is a dangerous and ill conceived idea.

Of course I don't pull test every single piece of pro. But I damned well, one, make sure I don't commit to it with nothing between me and the ground but that piece, or two, understand that falling may have utterly dire consequences resulting from, in part, the failure of that gear.

I'm not one for suing by any means. However.....

UCC 2-315 states clearly that there is an implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose when a merchant sells a good to someone and they know that the buyer is relying on the skill and judgment of the seller to select suitable goods for the application. In other words, if I walk into a mountaineering shop and say I want 20 feet of climbing webbing to rap off of, they are responsible for selling me webbing that will not fail under normal, anticipatable usage.

The other factor here is they did not make her aware of the splice even though the spool was marked (but hidden under a counter where purchaser could not see it). A "reasonable person" would not assume that webbing designed to be strong would have weak tape splices. 99.9% of Americans have no idea this is a "standard practice". When you buy a gun any decent gun shop will make darn sure you understand how the safety, loading, and firing mechanism works. There are a multitude of designs and they aren't all intuitive especially to a beginner.

Yes, redundancy was neglected and she shares responsibility it would seem. However, I would be somewhat sympathetic if I were a juror, and I really do hate the amount of litigation in this country.

All IMHO, I'm not a lawyer, etc.

sure you do ... its called clipping the 2nd bolt ... or even the 3rd in quite a few climbs

if yr gear fails then or before yr likely grounding

Did you read that short paragraph past the first sentence and a half? The relevant part: "...or two, understand that falling may have utterly dire consequences resulting from, in part, the failure of that gear." I know this consciously and unconsciously every single time I climb above a first or second bolt (and sometimes the third). If I can't accept that risk, I don't leave the ground.

The risk of gear failing through no fault of your own exists. Surely, you don't disagree with that, right? It may be the manufacturer's fault that the gear failed, but you own the resulting consequences of it entirely. You chose to climb. You knew the risk existed.

driving is quite dangerous ... most accidents are not because of manufacturing defects ...

however if you did have a defective car, the automaker has liability ...

or do you accept the fact that every time you turn the key you know the risk that a brand new car can fail ...

IMO having a few thousand pounds of steel going at 60+ MPH around a whole bunch of other such thousand pounds of steel ... is much more inherently dangerous than climbing

Last Sunday, I had two clients, a father and son, who wanted to learn how to build toprope anchors. They're in the process of transitioning from guided climbing to being self sufficient, so we spent several minutes in the beginning of the day talking about self sufficiency and what that means. I ended up giving them a little pop quiz of sorts, which involved me describing several accidents and, in each case, asking who was responsible for the injured climber's situation.

Every single correct answer was, "the climber." Some were obvious, such as a climber decides to free solo and falls. Others were less obvious, like a belayer drops his climber. One was a piece of equipment fails due to a manufacturer defect.

I'll spell it out, just in case anybody here finds it unclear. If you choose to climb, then you choose to accept a wide variety of risks, including your own ignorance, spliced webbing, exploding cams, and bizarre one-in-a-billion occurrences that have never happened before and nobody can predict.

I hate that this woman is hurt and suffering, but a lawsuit can never fix the root of her problem, and I hope she loses.

So you pull test every piece of pro you buy to 1/2 strength or something? When I pay 60 bucks for a cam that has a couple dollars worth of raw material in it, what I'm really paying for is the certification and quality of build. If I can't be 99.99999% certain that it isn't going to fail under a small load, it's useless and defective. This line of logic is akin to saying, hey, if you get in your new car and they forgot to put break fluid in it, tough luck if you die. You knew people die in cars every day. NO, the car was defective and not built/prepped properly. Absolving manufacturers/belayers/etc. of any responsibility is a dangerous and ill conceived idea.

and they forgot to put break fluid in it, tough luck if you die.

That must be the problem the customer expected brake

The fundamental disconnect here - will maybe not with this particular case as the cause and prevention seem pretty obvious - is the insistence that every accident has to have a "fault". Sometimes stuff happens.

The concept that the climber is always ultimately responsible is ludicrous. So I am at fault is some tourist above me clocked me with a rock and turned by brain to mush despite the fact that at the point that he threw the rock from their were warning signs in 3 languages? All you tough guys better stick to your guns and agree that - yup its my fault for choosing to climb. And stick to them again when the young mother and her infant get squashed on their front lawn by the engine falling off the plane - because after all she chose to come out of her house.

I don't think it's possible for me to disagree with you more.

Of course I don't pull test every single piece of pro. But I damned well, one, make sure I don't commit to it with nothing between me and the ground but that piece, or two, understand that falling may have utterly dire consequences resulting from, in part, the failure of that gear.

I'm pretty sure you're actually of the same mind on that, so I'm not entirely certain why we disagree.

You can tie in to denial and clip your rope to ignorance. Neither will save you.

So I have two issues with all this:
1. The idea that some "fault" has to assigned to every accident. Sometimes stuff just happens.

Apparently in this case everyone is determined to find fault - mostly with the user.

2. The macho "I am captain of my ship, master of my destiny, the buck stops here" attitude that is so prevalent among the "experienced" posers.. I mean posters here.

You don't seem to be laughing. But you never did have much of a sense of humor when someone disagreed with you. break vs. brake IS funny especially in this context.

What if you choose to climb in a shooting behind a shooting range? What if instead of someone throwing a rock one spontaneously falls? You can always concoct an argument that choosing to be where you are when something happens is your choice. And it gets pretty silly.

... on an otherwise safe sport climb...

How about an analogy.

Let's say I buy a pair of shoes. There was some kind of manufacturing weirdness and the soled didn't get glued on, but were held on by a couple piece of scotch tape.

So I put them on and my foot goes right through, leaving the sole lying on the floor. I lace them um, and walk out into a snowstorm. The shoes are flopping around my ankles, and my socks quickly get shredded and frozen. An hour later I check into an emergency room with frostbite.

If I sue, the judge should laugh in my face and throw the lawsuit out.

The same would happen in this case, except that your typical judge and jury don't have the experience with climbing that they do with putting on shoes and going for a walk. So the plaintiff's lawyer thinks she has a shot at turning her client's idiocy into some nice cha-ching.

GO

and if it turns out your belay device or rope has a strange, not easily discoverable defect that causes what should be a 10 ft. fall on an otherwise safe sport climb to turn into a 50 ft. meatdecking? that's still the climbers fault? bullshit. what makes climbing gear different from every other manufactured piece of equipment that there's no duty on the manufacturer to not sell a defective product?

What if you choose to climb in a shooting behind a shooting range?

What if instead of someone throwing a rock one spontaneously falls?

You can always concoct an argument that choosing to be where you are when something happens is your choice. And it gets pretty silly.

So I have two issues with all this:
1. The idea that some "fault" has to assigned to every accident. Sometimes stuff just happens. Apparently in this case everyone is determined to find fault - mostly with the user.

2. The macho "I am captain of my ship, master of my destiny, the buck stops here" attitude that is so prevalent among the "experienced" posers.. I mean posters here.