telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (10/17/90)
Michael Glodek must feel like a million dollars today. He's the landscaper who was building a new lawn for a home at 3521 Madison Avenue in Oak Brook, IL on Monday morning when his digging machine uprooted what Illinois Bell termed a 'very major, very important' part of their interoffice network covering northern Illinois. Glodek said, "I didn't do a JULIE because no one said there were any lines in the immediate vicinity." JULIE is the organization which keeps track of underground telephone and electric cables, plus water and gas pipelines in northern Illinois. A spokesperson for Illinois Bell retorted that "Every contractor is to do a JULIE before they start work, and he knew it as well as anyone..." Glodek said his machine 'snagged something down there', but he thought it must have been part of an old septic tank system which was common in that area many years ago ... so he decided to 'dig right in and root it out ...' and in the process he literally severed several thousand conversations then in progress on the fiber optic cable. Folks at IBT found out about it instantly, of course, but finding out *where* the problem was located was another matter. Some frantic employees of Illinois Bell set out in various directions looking for trouble. But as in May, 1988 after the Great Fire, their cellular phones were dead also, since the cable which had been cut served both Cellular One and Ameritech here. Using two-way radios, the employees began coordinating their search. Once the cut was located, two-way radios were used to bring many employees to the location in minutes. From about 9:30 AM Monday, when the cable was cut until more than twelve hours later, at 10:04 PM, Bell employees worked feverishly to restore service in what was described as the 'worst telephone outage in the area since May, 1988'. It took only about fifteen minutes to locate the cut and Mr. Glodek, who was still standing there wondering what to do next ... In terms of severity, the disruption in service knocked out all interoffice traffic between central offices in the 708 area code. Some re-routing of calls was possible, but like Hinsdale in May, 1988, the cut cable was so important and so strategic that very little could be done for the several hundred thousand subscribers in northern Illinois who were unable to place calls outside their local exchange all day. If you have a detailed map of northern Illinois, you will note the area involved: From Elk Grove on the north to Hinsdale on the south; from Oak Park on the east to St. Charles on the west ... all interoffice service was out, and much local service around Oak Brook was out. All cellular service throughout 312/708 was out, since both Cellular One and Ameritech have their offices in Schaumburg, right in the affected zone. Naturally many paging devices were out, since these are also operated by companies in the western suburbs. Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood lost all phone service for ten hours, until 8 PM Monday night. Illinois Bell was able to provide the hospital with a limited amount of cellular service and two-way radio service late in the morning. 911 service was out everywhere for several hours. Police officers cruised the streets and used their radios to relay reports from citizens. Ohare Airport operated at one-third its normal schedule, since the control tower was totally cut off from the FAA Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, IL. FAX machines and computers throughout the area were out of service, and several companies simply let their employees go home for the day. The abruptness of the cut, forcing thousands of calls off line all at the same time caused some major confusion for several minutes as Illinois Bell operators became deluged with requests to 'assist in dialing' numbers which not only did not answer, but simply returned dead silence to the caller. Once network re-routing got under way, limited as it was minutes after the problem was isolated, the burden on the operators became somewhat less, but Chicago (312) callers, who were never without operator service (lots of 708 people go over the cut cable to reach an operator) still bombarded the operators for several hours with requests for assistance in calling the suburbs. No one in 312 or 708 could reach the cellular companies to find out why their cell phones were dead ... much of the affected (708) area could not even reach the operator, repair service, directory or the business office.
roeber@cithe3.cithep.caltech.edu (Frederick Roeber) (10/18/90)
In article <13607@accuvax.nwu.edu>, telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: > Michael Glodek must feel like a million dollars today. He's the > landscaper who was building a new lawn for a home at 3521 Madison > Avenue in Oak Brook, IL on Monday morning when his digging machine > uprooted what Illinois Bell termed a 'very major, very important' part > of their interoffice network covering northern Illinois. Why aren't these networks, which are obviously so important (both directly (e.g. 911, hospital pagers, and air traffic control) and indirectly (i.e. major economic impact)) multiply connected? Frederick G. M. Roeber | e-mail: roeber@caltech.edu or roeber@vxcern.cern.ch r-mail: CERN/SL-CO, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland | telephone: +41 22 767 5373 [Moderator's Note: In fact, Illinois Bell has been working on such a system since 1988, following the Hinsdale fire. It will be completed in 1991. Unfortnatly, the incident this week was in an area that had not yet been completed. Bell referred to that as quite an irony: They had worked for two and a half years on the new system, and gotten stung on one of the few parts still undergoing change. Also, IBT filed suit against the contractor on Wednesday for about one million dollars. A large business in the area filed a class action suit against the contractor for five million dollars; on behalf of all affected businesses in the area. PAT]
wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil (Will Martin) (10/18/90)
>Michael Glodek must feel like a million dollars today. He's the >landscaper who was building a new lawn for a home at 3521 Madison >Avenue in Oak Brook, IL on Monday morning when his digging machine >uprooted what Illinois Bell termed a 'very major, very important' part >of their interoffice network covering northern Illinois. >Glodek said, "I didn't do a JULIE because no one said there were any >lines in the immediate vicinity." JULIE is the organization which >keeps track of underground telephone and electric cables, plus water >and gas pipelines in northern Illinois. A spokesperson for Illinois >Bell retorted that "Every contractor is to do a JULIE before they >start work, and he knew it as well as anyone..." >Mr. Michael Glodek just stood there watching ... he admitted 'this is probably >going to cost me a lot of money, but that is what my insurance is for ...' >"You bet it will cost him a lot of money," said a Bell spokesperson. >"He'll get sued I'm sure." >Hinsdale and May, 1988 are still sensitive issues here; Glodek opened an old >wound, and will no doubt rue the day he didn't bother to 'do a JULIE' before >starting his work. He'll be getting sued for a long time to come. There's something missing here. Why would this guy be sued, and by whom? 1) Is there a *law* to the effect that someone digging on private property must "do a JULIE" or otherwise investigate what may be underground there before digging? Sure, doing that is a good idea, but is it actually legally required? 2) This was work on ordinary (it appears) residential property. Why would a major utility service trunk, as opposed to a feeder, be located under such property, as opposed to under municipal-owned or public property like a right-of-way, where one would expect such utility services to be run? Would there be something in the homeowner's deed or title-search papers showing an easement for this use, that the homeowner would be expected to know about? Or is this all "hidden" and secretive? There obviously was no sign there indicating an underground cable ran that way; I've seen such signs many places, and I would have thought it was the duty (and good business sense!) of the telco to keep such signs maintained and in-place over such an important cable run. 3) If the telco doesn't even keep warning signs there, how could they sue this contractor? Sure, they have infinite lawyers and anybody can sue anybody else for *anything*, but, aside from that practical consideration, what basis would they have for this suit? 4) Who else would/could sue this guy? Any and every phone user who was inconvenienced? Again, if he broke a law about digging without checking first, I could see that, but if there wasn't any law, what would be the grounds for such suit? 5) Suppose he had "done a JULIE" and checked and that system had been wrong, and told him the area was clear, and he dug and the same thing had happened? (Something for comp.risks. :-) Who would then have been at fault? Who owns/runs "JULIE" and how does it work? 6) This was a pretty obvious situation; you've got a guy with a backhoe in open land with a big hole and two broken ends of cable sticking out. Suppose the work had been done by one of those horizontal-digging underground-boring machines, putting in a drainage pipe or something, that chewed through the cable under an undisturbed surface, and the machine just chomped the cable like it was a tree root and continued on. No one doing the work might even notice. Now here you have "n" miles of underground cable, no obvious hole anyhere, and a break somewhere. With copper wire, you can use time-domain reflectometry or something like that to get some idea of where to start looking, but can you do that with fiber optics? You know, if these cable locations are public info, and a lot of them are under private residential property, this sounds like a great terrorist scenario -- just buy up strategically-placed houses and secretly tunnel underground to those cables/pipes/conduits. At one time, all over the country, just chop them in a combined strike. The whole infrastructure falls with no visible cause! You could be obvious about it and use bombs to cut the lines, but just cutting them without visible actions would be much more effective. Regards, Will wmartin@st-louis-emh2.army.mil OR wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil [Moderator's Note: Effective soon, a new law here requires contact and approval from JULIE prior to digging in the ground. After a review of appropriate platt maps and easement documents, JULIE will approve the dig or decline its approval. If approved, JULIE will issue a unique authorization code to the person(s) doing the digging which, in the event of a cable cut or other damage such as a broken gas pipe will serve to indemnify the person(s) digging. We have *lots* of buried cable and pipelines here. And, they run under all sorts of private property. At the present time, the law (being changed) does not *require* JULIE approval, but recommends it. The law in Illinois grants easement rights to utilities, meaning if they have a cable running under your land, they have a right to examine/repair it without your permission, and you must obtain their permission to remove it or otherwise injure it. Who would sue him? The telco (or other utility), for damaging their property, as per their easement rights. Bell did in fact file suit Wednesday to the tune of one million dollars against the contractor. PAT]
martin@bellcore.bellcore.com (Martin Harriss (ACP)) (10/18/90)
In article <13607@accuvax.nwu.edu> telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: [ much stuff deleted about cable being dug up ] I seem to remember that after Hinsdale, IBT agreed to make modifications to its network so that this sort of thing would not happen again. Have they decided against this? Maybe they just hadn't got around to it yet? I presume that at the very least, Mr Glodek will be facing a large bill from IBT for this disruption, and possibly law suits from other affected parties. I sure hope that he has good insurance! Martin Harriss martin@cellar.bae.bellcore.com [Moderator's Note: As a matter of fact, that project has been going on for the past year and a half ... it is about a year from completion. Bell said it was ironic this latest event occurred in one of the areas scheduled for modifications over the next few months. Yes, he is facing a large bill. See notes above. Multiple lawsuits were filed on Wednesday by IBT and various companies. Some lawsuits named Bell as well, and on those, IBT said they would force the contractor in as a co-defendant along with them. PAT]
floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) (10/20/90)
>[Moderator's Note: Effective soon, a new law here requires contact and >approval from JULIE prior to digging in the ground. After a review of >appropriate platt maps and easement documents, JULIE will approve the >dig or decline its approval. If approved, JULIE will issue a unique >authorization code to the person(s) doing the digging which, in the >event of a cable cut or other damage such as a broken gas pipe will >serve to indemnify the person(s) digging. ... >The law in Illinois >grants easement rights to utilities, meaning if they have a cable >running under your land, they have a right to examine/repair it >without your permission, and you must obtain their permission to >remove it or otherwise injure it. Who would sue him? The telco (or >other utility), for damaging their property, as per their easement >rights. Bell did in fact file suit Wednesday to the tune of one >million dollars against the contractor. PAT] All of the above sounds reasonable to me, *except* that last line. He should counter sue for harassment. They've filed suit without even trying to negotiate a payment for their damages, and they are obviously trying to collect more than the cost of the damage he did. What he damaged was apparently one each fiber optic device. He probably owes them the cost to repair it. Several hundreds, or a few thousands, of dollars. What I object to is going after the cost of lost service. That was caused by proven bad management and bad planning. The study done following the Hinsdale fire disaster is all the documentation needed to prove it. NOBODY builds non-redundant systems and puts critical traffic on them. (At least nobody with good management and good planning does.) Floyd L. Davidson floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu 8347 Richardson Hwy. floydd@chinet.chi.il.us Salcha, AK 99714 [and related to Alascom, Inc. by a pay check, only] [Moderator's Note: They apparently did ask him to pay, and reasonably assuming he would not do so voluntarily, they filed suit. As to the amount of the damages it goes a lot further than 'one each fiber optic device' as you stated. How much is the salary for a dozen men being paid union wages working several hours overtime? How much did it cost the Traffic Department to rush several additional people into service as operators during the crunch of calls? A special bank of cell phones and two way radios was set up for the hospital to use all day. Were those free? What about the public relations people who rushed a press release into circulation and spent the day on radio talk shows explaining the problem? What about the cost of responding to the several lawsuits filed against *telco* -- as though it was *their* fault that service was out -- by several business places in the area? Should telco go to the Legal Aid Bureau? The cost to telco might well have approached a million dollars by the time all was back to normal in 708-land. PAT]
floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) (10/21/90)
PT>>rights. Bell did in fact file suit Wednesday to the tune of one PT>>million dollars against the contractor. PAT] FD>...trying to negotiate a payment for their damages, and they are FD>obviously trying to collect more than the cost of the damage he did. FD>What he damaged was apparently one each fiber optic device. He FD>probably owes them the cost to repair it. Several hundreds, or a few FD>thousands, of dollars. FD>What I object to is going after the cost of lost service. That was FD>caused by proven bad management and bad planning. The study done FD>following the Hinsdale fire disaster is all the documentation needed FD>to prove it. NOBODY builds non-redundant systems and puts critical FD>traffic on them. (At least nobody with good management and good FD>planning does.) PT>[Moderator's Note: They apparently did ask him to pay, and reasonably PT>assuming he would not do so voluntarily, they filed suit. Do you mean you know that they did, or you know that they did not negotiate damages? In the given amount of time they couldn't have done any 'good faith' negotiations. PT>amount of the damages it goes a lot further than 'one each fiber optic PT>device' as you stated. How much is the salary for a dozen men being PT>paid union wages working several hours overtime? This is precisely what the contractor is responsible for. Plus all other costs associated with repair of the damaged cable. It won't be inexpensive. PT>How much did it cost ... several examples of expenses as a result of outage deleted ... PT>have approached a million dollars by the time all was back to normal PT>in 708-land. PAT] Virtually everything listed above is the cost of lost service. The loss of service resulted from a non-redundant system with no alternate restoral route available. That is bad planning by definition, which comes from bad management. The study done after the fire disaster and the plan that arose from it are documentation that the potential for a disaster was planned into the system. For anyone not aware of what "redundant" and "restoral route" mean, in this context, the normal design for radio and fiber optic systems is that there are actually two radios or two cables. Only one is normally used. Sometimes the secondary carries special traffic, like live video feeds, but normally it is totally idle or carries identical traffic. When there are several routes between two locations there may only be one spare, in which case a failure on any one of them would be alt-routed on the spare. In this particular case it appears that either a separate route entirely or a second fiber optic laid just a few feet apart from the one that was cut would have prevented most of the service loss. My guess is the lawyers decided it was good PR to file for such a large amount. I'm betting they don't get close to a million bucks when it is settled. Floyd L. Davidson floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu 8347 Richardson Hwy. floydd@chinet.chi.il.us Salcha, AK 99714 [and related to Alascom, Inc. by a pay check, only]
riddle@hoss.unl.edu (Michael H. Riddle) (10/21/90)
In <13826@accuvax.nwu.edu> floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes: >All of the above sounds reasonable to me, *except* that last line. >What I object to is going after the cost of lost service. That was >caused by proven bad management and bad planning. >[Moderator's Note: (Pat goes on to mention a lot of valid costs occasioned by the cable cut that IBT would not otherwise have incurred.) What we have here seems to be the technological equivalent of the classic "thin-skull" law school tort problem. The tortfeasor "takes their victim as they find them." If an ordinary person, negligently bumped on the skull, would only have a headache, it's no defense when the actual victim suffers a fractured skull and dies. "But for the action of the tortfeasor, the injury would not have occured, and the tortfeasor is liable for the total damage." In the case of the cable cut, the cut did occur, the contractor was responsible, an ordinary contractor following the customs of the profession would have "done a JULIE," and then there would have been at least some legal protection. One could still argue that when a excavator encounters an unknown obstacle, they should give it at least some cursory examination before using brute force to remove it. In this case, no JULIE was done, no examination of the obstacle was made, and the contractor is likely to pay a *lot* of money to compensate for the resulting damages. (Or the contractor's insurance company!) riddle@hoss.unl.edu | University of Nebraska riddle@crchpux.unl.edu | College of Law mike.riddle@f27.n285.z1.fidonet.org | Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
crawford@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Brian Crawford) (10/21/90)
In article <13826@accuvax.nwu.edu>, floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes: > What he damaged was apparently one each fiber optic device. He > probably owes them the cost to repair it. Several hundreds, or a few > thousands, of dollars. A year ago, the City of Tempe's Water Dept. happened to dig up Sprint's/MCI's (can't remember which) main fibre optic line which runs along the Southern Pacific railway right-of-way through the southern states. Unfortunately for the Water Dept, it happens to run right through town here. I seem to remember their final tab running in the neighborhood of $300K-$400K. Don't know if this line would compare to the one in Illinois, though. Brian Crawford crawford@enuxha.eas.asu.edu
dgc@math.ucla.edu (David G. Cantor) (10/21/90)
Apparently the telco expects to be completely reimbursed for business lost due to the damaged cable. However, most telco tariffs (written by telcos, of course) provide that if the telco fails to provide service (regardless of cause, even gross neglicence) the most that the telco is liable for is the charge for the service. Perhaps the Court should take this into account when it assesses damages against the contractor who damaged the cable. David G. Cantor Department of Mathematics University of California at Los Angeles Internet: dgc@math.ucla.edu [Moderator's Note: I think that will be considered in the case at hand. There have already been so many suits filed in the matter both against the contractor and telco that I suspect they will wind up being consolidated and heard at one time. PAT]
kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) (10/22/90)
In article <13789@accuvax.nwu.edu> Will Martin <wmartin@stl-06sima. army.mil> writes: >1) Is there a *law* to the effect that someone digging on private >property must "do a JULIE" or otherwise investigate what may be >underground there before digging? Sure, doing that is a good idea, but >is it actually legally required? In California (at least in my area), you don't HAVE to call, but you are still responsible if you injure a cable. >2) This was work on ordinary (it appears) residential property. Why >would a major utility service trunk, as opposed to a feeder, be >located under such property, as opposed to under municipal-owned or >public property like a right-of-way, where one would expect such >utility services to be run? Sometimes the major utility runs are installed LONG before the subdivision is created. In that case, you can conceivably get utilities anywhere under a property. Generally, the house must be sited so that the utilities can be dug up if needed, though I once saw an old subdivision that had a major sewer main under the principal residence. For a new subdivision, it is very common to run phone, water, and electric utilities under the property edge, where the sidewalk would be, rather than in the street. >Would there be something in the >homeowner's deed or title-search papers showing an easement for this >use, that the homeowner would be expected to know about? Yes, absolutely. The easements would show on both the subdivision maps and the property map. > ... indicating an underground cable ran that way; I've seen such signs >many places, and I would have thought it was the duty (and good >business sense!) of the telco to keep such signs maintained and >in-place over such an important cable run. I've seen maps where the utilities were shown as big red lines. I guess the homeowner planted over the red... :-) Most homeowners would not appreciate the phone company planting "little flags" through their front yards to mark the easement. In any event, the homeowner is free (under the terms of the easement) to do whatever he wants to the surface, as long as the phone company has the right to dig it up if necessary (with no compensation to the homeowner). It's up to the homeowner and the contractor to know what's under the ground. This was a phone fiber. One day my neighbor had a contractor putting in a stairway of railroad ties in the front lawn. They were held to the ground with long steel pipe sections. I watched one of the workmen stop a sledgehammer swing in mid stroke when a passing PG&E repairman told him he was directly above a 12 KV underground line. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
gordon@utacfd.arl.utexas.edu (Gordon Burditt) (10/22/90)
>Michael Glodek must feel like a million dollars today. He's the >landscaper who was building a new lawn for a home at 3521 Madison >Avenue in Oak Brook, IL on Monday morning when his digging machine >uprooted what Illinois Bell termed a 'very major, very important' part >of their interoffice network covering northern Illinois. What happens, financially, in a situation like this? Does the contractor or his liability insurance pay: for the cost of repairing the cable? for the overtime of people locating and routing around the cut? for the (not necessarily over-)time of people locating and routing around the cut? (allocated how?) for estimated lost revenue? (estimated how?) for lost revenue due to service guarantees and missed time-to-repair deadlines (especially common on business 800 numbers)? What happens if neither the cut nor other problems go over the downtime guarantee, but together they do? to area employers, for paying employees sent home due to inoperative phones? to MCI, for additional advertising to counter insults in ads by AT&T and/or Sprint? Does MCI get unlimited slamming rights on the contractor's phones ? :-) Would anything be different if it wasn't a contractor, but a homeowner digging a garden (pretty DEEP garden!) or trying to remove tree stumps, on his own property? Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon [Moderator's Note: That is the reason we have courts and judges, Gordon. The court will decide who pays for what, and how much. PAT]
varney@ihlpf.att.com (Al L Varney) (10/24/90)
In article <13789@accuvax.nwu.edu>, wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil (Will Martin) writes: > 6) This was a pretty obvious situation; you've got a guy with a > backhoe in open land with a big hole and two broken ends of cable > sticking out. Suppose the work had been done by one of those > horizontal-digging underground-boring machines, putting in a drainage > pipe or something, that chewed through the cable under an undisturbed > surface, and the machine just chomped the cable like it was a tree > root and continued on. No one doing the work might even notice. Now > here you have "n" miles of underground cable, no obvious hole anyhere, > and a break somewhere. With copper wire, you can use time-domain > reflectometry or something like that to get some idea of where to > start looking, but can you do that with fiber optics? Last question first: time-domain reflectometry has it's optical counter- part -- a broken fiber reflects like a bad mirror. Check out the ton of ads in Telephony for fiber trouble-locating equipment. As to non-backhoe fade-inducers, one of my Dad's neighbors had the misfortune of killing a quarter-mile of cable connecting an old previously-independent area with the rest of Southwestern Bell. The scene: A county (gravel) road in a lightly-populated area in Kansas. A recently-regraded ditch parallels the road, with a broken-down fence on the far side of the ditch. Fence needs repair before cows can occupy pasture on far side of fence. The solution: Build a new fence just inside the old one, leaving a couple of feet between fences to allow access to the "road" side of the fence. The problem: When SW Bell bought out the Independent, overhead wire was replaced with underground cable and the cable was trenched inside existing telephone poles (which tended to be directly in line with any existing fence). Since the post holes were dug to a depth about equal to the cable depth, several dozen holes were in place before the auger pulled up a good-sized chunk of cable. Unfortunately, the cable was damaged in so many places the whole distance was re-trenched, inside the new fence. Note that there are (and were) orange poles placed near each intersection of the cable and any public road, with a reminder that telephone cables are buried nearby. Since the affected area has a population of about 70 farms, one church and three businesses, the cable damage provided more coffee break jokes than consternation. Al Varney, AT&T Network Systems, Lisle, IL
davidb@pacer.uucp (David Barts) (10/24/90)
What I'm wondering is why IBT didn't bury a strip of warning tape above the cable. (Maybe they did, but I've heard no mention of something like "the contractor ignored the warning tape and continued digging" in any accounts I've heard of this incident.) When my parents had a house built in 1977, I distinctly remember the utilities filling the trenches to within a foot of the top, laying a strip of thick yellow plastic tape, and then filling the trenches the rest of the way. This was in a western state (New Mexico) that has far fewer laws and regulations than a populous state like Illinois. Why would IBT (or the state of Illinois) fail to take the same steps to protect a major trunk in the 1980s that Mountain bell took to protect a single residential service drop in the 1970s? David Barts Pacer Corporation, Bothell, WA davidb@pacer.uucp ...!uunet!pilchuck!pacer!davidb
wrf@mab.ecse.rpi.edu (Wm Randolph Franklin) (10/24/90)
It's the law in NY that you check two days in advance before digging. There's been a change in utility attitudes in the last few years. Then it was "Please check before digging" and there were funny commercials on TV reminding people. Now it's "Check or else!" Re suing for loss of service: It would be fairer if this were part of the tariff. Now a customer gets nothing unless he's big enough to afford a lawsuit against someone with deep pockets smaller than him. Wm. Randolph Franklin Internet: wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (or @cs.rpi.edu) Bitnet: Wrfrankl@Rpitsmts Telephone: (518) 276-6077; Telex: 6716050 RPI TROU; Fax: (518) 276-6261 Paper: ECSE Dept., 6026 JEC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst, Troy NY, 12180
mpd@anomaly.sbs.com (Michael P. Deignan) (10/25/90)
riddle@hoss.unl.edu (Michael H. Riddle) writes: >In the case of the cable cut, the cut did occur, the contractor was >responsible, an ordinary contractor following the customs of the >profession would have "done a JULIE," and then there would have been >at least some legal protection. One could still argue that when a >excavator encounters an unknown obstacle, they should give it at least >some cursory examination before using brute force to remove it. Even if the contractor had done a "Julie", there is still no special indemnification that the contractor receives as a result (at least, from what I've gathered from the various postings...) I do find it disturbing that various utility lines could be running under your property with no apparent warning. I used to live in a fairly rural area, thru which natural gas and petroleum pipelines ran. Whenever you intersected either underground line with a road, there were "posts" on both sides of the road warning you of the presence of the pipelines. Seems that something similar was lacking in this case. Michael P. Deignan, President -- Small Business Systems, Inc. Domain: mpd@anomaly.sbs.com -- Box 17220, Esmond, RI 02917 UUCP: ...uunet!rayssd!anomaly!mpd -- Telebit: +1 401 455 0347 XENIX Archives: login: xxcp, password: xenix Index: ~/SOFTLIST