Dispute Help

[souske55]

Before i start thank you for your time. As to my problem, PIKE electric corporation the one that runs around replacing telephone phones came into my back yard yesterday and asked me where my sewage drain line is i gave them a general "idea" of where it is because im not exactly sure where it is my self the man said ok and took off a few mins later i hear them coming in my back yard and then i hear bubling coming from my sink thinking that they may have ran over my sewer line i then head out side to the 40,000 pound truck (this was one of the crew members est on the truck weight) sunk down by a good foot to a foot and a half in the ground i immediatley told the crew member that came out of the truck (i think you ran over my sewer drain line) to which he calls his other cre members over to pull the truck out of the hole, Well they get the truck out then start digging after a little while they start to smell the sewage water and then finnaly see it coming up they then move back a few feet and dig again they find the sewage again and this time they find my pipe this is after they call there supervisors who assures me he's going to do everything he can to get it fixed, he later tells me that its late and he cant get in touch with his bosses so he'll be back tommaro morning, the next morning he shows up with his crew at around 7:45 they start taking video of the tracks and the damage they caused ask for my phone number and name then leave, after about 4 hours or so i get a call from the claims department saying theres nothing they can do and that its my fault because i told them where they could drive she even stated that ahe heard this from every crew member even tho i only spoke to one person that morning before this happend she also stated that the crew members told her they were 10 to 12 feet away from where i specified the pipe to be which was of course not true at most they were 1 to 2 foot away from the "general area" i described the pipe to be i told the lady this and she said that is not what the crew members told her. So basically she offered no help, they will not fix the damage they caused on private property i might add and there blaming it on me that its my fault because i give the "one guy" not the whole crew and "idea" of where the line is so. Can anyone help me??

[Chinajan]

This is a UK site - you may get more helpful responses on a US based one. Good luck.

[Buenchico]

Welcome to The Answerbank.

However this is a UK-based website and our laws are very different to those in the USA (where I assume that you are, as that's where Pike Electric operates).

Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, we've got no regular US contributors here (and certainly nobody with detailed knowledge of US civil law).

As a general legal principle though (which almost certainly applies throughout most of the world), giving someone permission to access your land is most definitely not the same as giving them permission to cause damage to your property (or to the services feeding your property).

The essential question that any court would need to address (whether in the UK or the USA) is one of 'negligence'. If it can be shown that Pike Electric, or their agents, acted negligently, you should be entitled to compensation. Any good lawyer should be able to show that it's not good enough for workers to assume that a sewer pipe is located in the very rough area indicated to them by the resident of a property; 'due diligence' requires that they should then CHECK the information before risking damage to the pipe.

For a more detailed answer, from someone acquainted with US civil law, you'll need to post on a US-based site. Unfortunately the closest US equivalent to this site (answerbag.com) is poorly moderated and hence full of spammers and trolls. Much the same seems to apply to answers.yahoo.com too. The only US-based site I know of where you might be able to get an answer is Quora:
https://www.quora.com/