Share Your Business News With CBJ
If your business has exciting news you’d like to share with the world, CBJ wants to hear from you! We’re always interested in what your climbing related business is doing and we’d like to help you get the word out.
Tell us about:
New climbing gyms or other climbing businesses
Announcements of hiring key personnel
Tips or questions about running your business
People on the move
Unique climbing product or service
Or anything related to the business of climbing! Just send us an note.
Your Legal Duty of Care
By Reb Greg
The following is intended to discuss only general matters of law, and not opinions regarding the laws of a particular state or other jurisdiction. Consult with an attorney familiar with your operation and the laws which apply to it.
Rarely would a climbing gym manager describe his or her first priority as the avoidance of legal liability, but an understanding of the legal duty of care owed to gym visitors, including non-climbers, is essential to a successful operation. Under our system of jurisprudence a gym which does what it says it will do and takes reasonably good care of climbers and other visitors generally is going to be on the winning side of a dispute or law suit, over an alleged injury or other loss.
But mistakes can be made by even the best operations, so it is important that professionals in our industry understand certain fundamental concepts of legal liability. Note that we are discussing one’s legal duty of care. This is not a matter of ethics or morals, but only what the law requires in a relationship between a gym and its visitors. And our subject is a gym’s duty of care.
Caring for and about another’s welfare is a nice sentiment. But that is not our topic. As far as the law is concerned, one who does not love his neighbor nevertheless has certain obligations relating to that neighbor’s wellbeing. Specifically, one’s legal duty of care is at the heart of a claim of negligence. Your gym may be faced with issues of breach of contract, failure to comply with health and other local ordinances, and even charges of criminal conduct; but the most common claim that will be made against you will be one of negligence.
A negligence claim, to be successful, must have four elements:
- a legal duty of care owed to the person claiming some loss;
- a breach, or violation, of that duty;
- a loss, which may be a personal injury or death, emotional upset, or loss or damage to property; and
- a causal connection between the loss and the breach.
Net Bouldering in Germany
High ball bouldering over a net at Blockhelden in Bamberg, Germany. Find more photos here.
The Evolution of Evo Rock
Evo Rock + Fitness has lived up to its name and so has its founder and CEO Hilary Harris. Harris built the first Evo Rock in Concord, New Hampshire in 2012 after a multi-year effort that included leaving her job as an architect and pounding the pavement in search of investors.
Harris started climbing in the late 1980’s in Boulder, Colorado and quickly made a name for herself with FA’s on local crags and competing in international competitions. After completing her schooling to become a licensed architect, she moved to New Hampshire and sunk into the life of a desk jockey.
“For years I sat at my desk and mourned being a part of the climbing world and wished that I hadn’t made the decision I made,” Harris told CBJ in a phone interview from her home in Portland, Maine. “I felt that I had lost a big part of myself. I was no longer in the day-to-day world of climbing. And I watched the industry grow.”
Eventually she got sick of sitting on the sidelines. After putting together a team of investors and convincing a bank to loan her the rest, Harris was able to open the Evo Rock – Concord facility, which has 16,000 square feet of climbing. But that was only the beginning for Harris and Evo.