Lonewolf_Geocaching

Late night / early morning....

Nope. That has nothing to do with it. However it is a bit of a pickle to explain why so please bear with me. Vicarious is third party. If a "worker" gets sued and his "employer" does not have training in place. Then the "employer" falls under vicarious liability. If the employer trained the worker. The worker takes all the blame and gets sacked for gross miss conduct. To get technical it is strict, common law Respondeat superior. Translated as "let the master answer" To answer the original question and provide some advice.... What does apply here is a simple case of common law. You would have to prove violation of duty of care. The claimant must be able to show a duty of care imposed by law which the defendant has breached. Then of course the claimant would have to get past a defense of Volenti non fit injuria ("to a willing person, injury is not done"). Geocaching is inherently dangerous. Prove otherwise or leave the court room empty handed. So basically without getting really complicated. Based on the "balance of probability" the defendant is going to have put out a pretty stupid cache to get sued. Right now there is no legal precedent that I am currently aware of to tip that balance. That is the right idea! Or to put it another way if the landowner has done a quick risk assessment and implemented plans so far as is reasonably practicable to safeguard others then quite frankly the landowner protected too. Adding a cache does not change this basic legal principle. I hope that all kinda makes sense as I type it at this late hour. In short we are all safe for now.

This does not work anymore. The link opens up a XML page --- wtf?

There lies the truth in the details. Without good communication. All i see here is another load of wild speculation about how the police, legal system and MOD work. Whilst nobody has any facts surrounding the case. If the note finder or CO does not want to contact the police then please contact the GAGB for a very diplomatic approach. The fact that a note was left means nothing without the background story..... We need to know if this is a local misunderstanding or A new local police SOP or "Fight Club" There we go folks case closed. Problem solved. Easy as that.

I would like to see the crime ref number checked against records. The story is too vague to determine what happened. It would be nice to all the information. Just because one local officer knows about geocaching does not imply that they all know. So the details of what brought them here would be useful. It be worth flagging this up with a reviewer in you area. To check if this is because of this one cache or a new local policy by the local police force in question.

The best most expensive GPSr in the world will not usually get you any closer that 10 feet on a good day. It is almost impossible because the hider has the same limitations as you do. The chance of you both being right to within a foot is almost impossible. At this range it all comes down to skill and that is where the real fun starts. This skill does not come naturally and must be learned. Give it time. You will surprise yourself. When I started my car would frequently get 'lost' in the parking lot Four months later I can find a micro sized in the woods Next year I be able to find a nano, possibly The biggest thing you can do is just enjoy the walk and the visits to places that you would not normally see. The rest all comes in time.

I am really glad you took action on the cache. That was very sociable of you to disable the cache and avoid a possible negative backlash on the geocaching community as a whole. This is very commendable. I would suggest not archiving it just yet but a move might be best to avoid activity in the immediate area. I would now move the cache because everyone will be on the look out for people trashing the place now. Therefore, it would not be fair on the next hapless cacher who might be confronted by the local neighbour hood watch or local police whilst "acting suspiciously".

The answer is simple in America it is google maps all the way. When I am there google mapping helps a lot. I live just on the shore of Lake Houston,TX. Here the area is still slowly developing. Google updates more frequently and that is a lot better when you looking at new construction. Which is just as well because proper American TOPO maps are terrible to look at and never in date. However back in the UK. Bing has it hands down! There is different map layers shown here. It will give you a look at os mapping at 1:25000. These are worth just under $5000 but are show here completely free of charge.

Oh! Bing is also the only source of free OS mapping at 1:25000

Here is some trivia on Bing mapping that i have noticed. Bing is used on the iPhone Geocaching App. You can save the map for offline viewing. There is an option to change to Google maps but you can't save them in the app. So most people run with Bing maps when saving the cache to favourites. So although Google is better. Bing still has some important functions.