A Guide to Identifying Negligence from a Dam Failure
Publication: Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction
Volume 15, Issue 4
Abstract
Negligence is a common and expensive category of malpractice in the professional engineering community. To claim negligence, a plaintiff must prove all elements of negligence: duty, breach, causation, and damages. This paper aims to teach a broad audience how to avoid negligence by introducing each element of negligence for each party in the Ka Loko Dam dispute. For each element, the principles, analysis, and reflection of negligence will be applied. In 2006, the Ka Loko Dam failed on Kauai after the dam breached and flooded downstream houses. Numerous homes and people perished. The State of Hawaii did not thoroughly inspect the dam, the county of Kauai mayor prevented the Kauai engineer from stopping unpermitted dam construction activity, the dam owner illegally filled the dam’s emergency spillway, and no governmental objection was raised when the spillway was filled. Identifying elements of negligence is best learned from prior construction failures. The negligence from each party may serve as an example of what qualifies as negligence and the consequences of negligence in the construction industry.
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Data Availability Statement
No data, models, or code were generated or used during the study.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Dane Sobol, MS for work on this project.
References
Works Cited
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Legal Affairs and Dispute Resolution in Engineering and Construction
Volume 15 • Issue 4 • November 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 18, 2021
Accepted: Apr 23, 2023
Published online: Jul 24, 2023
Published in print: Nov 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Dec 24, 2023
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