Who's responsible for landslide damage?

Question

After a landslide, who's responsible for paying for the damage? The geologists, or the people who didn't ask the geologists if the area was safe?

Answer 1

Very rarely is it ever the fault of the geologists. The geologists are usually the ones that say "Don't build there." It's the engineers who tell us to be quiet while they engineer it to be safe. For example, a landslide totally destroyed a dam in Italy where geologists warned the engineers that there was a historic risk of landslides in that very valley. The destruction of the dam released the water that later destroyed a village downstream along with several bridges. It turns out that the geologists were overruled because it was politically expedient to build the dam in that valley, not because it was the best place to build a dam. That happens all the time for various reasons, money being a big one.

As far as who's responsible, there are several factors that come into play. Most insurance companies will call it an act of god and say that they don't have to pay for that. If someone else caused the landslide by removing plant cover or destabilized it in some way, then you can blame that person but what's probably going to happen is that their insurance company is going to drag their feet and your insurance company isn't going to fight them very hard because your company knows that the tables could be turned very easily onto them on another insurance policy for someone else. No one wants to have to eat their own words. However, if this is a case of where you specifically asked the home builder if there was a risk of landslides and they said no, you could sue them for misrepresentation but that's a he-said, she-said situation. Also, even when people suspect that there might be a problem, they don't ask the experts because of plausible deniability. If they contacted an expert who told them NOT to build there, they're directly liable. If they never contacted an expert, they could say that they didn't know. Honest!

In other words, you're out of luck. Sorry. I heard that governor of California was trying to get some law passed to address that but I never heard what happened to it.

Answer 2

You pay for your own damage. If you build on an unstable slope, you can't blame anyone but yourself. It is your responsbility. If someone on the slope above you removes trees or affects the slope in such a way as to make it more unstable you might have a case of contributory negligence but that would be it. Check your insurance policy to see if you are covered for landslides.

It is certainly not the fault of a geologist.

Answer 3

That's not really a geology question - that's a legal question. Sometimes these things are fought in court.

Sometimes geologists don't know, sometimes the developer doesn't look at geology (often they are not legally required to), sometimes developers do and the build anyway, sometimes owners don't do their research when buying property.