Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/518

 The Evolution of a Legal Sky Pilot. The following are ventured as the answers of the legal sphinx in the era of the air ship to the flying riddles proposed. Flyers will not be compelled to purchase rights of way through the atmosphere, nor will rights of way be acquired by prescription. Flyers will not be trespassers on your or my air shafts as there will be no damages to you or me by the passing of the air ships through them. Flyers will have to have places of ascent and descent with egress and ingress to the same, and they will have to own enough soil to fur nish this and prevent themselves from being built out of aerial stations by skyscrapers. The owner of any machine causing any ac cident will be responsible for its results. The owner of the soil will at no time assume the hazard of being upon the earth with ma chines in the heavens moving over his life, liberty and property. The cases already cited determine that flyers will have to start from their stations with all the care and caution of a limited from a terminal. Necessarily they will have to advertise their business and movements. There will be persons impelled by curiosity, others as travelers to go where the flyer is preparing to fly. There will have to be a proper care to protect them from danger. The station and its neighborhood must be reasonably safe for mortals to be in. If the flyer be of eccentric habits, there will have to be due caution and care to provide against the risks of such eccentricities. If for the want of the same, one is injured, or if in starting the machine pulls over a few chim neys, digs a hole in a skyscraper, the law will compel the owner of the flyer to pay all dam ages. That is, if process can be obtained, for we venture to say that the laws regulating the service of all kinds of processes will have to be changed to meet the new order of things. Sheriffs will have to live in air ships and services will have to be good wherever caught, or there will be a deluge of bailiff jumping as to outdo anything the world has vet seen in that line.

467

In descending the navigator of the sky will not be able to come down in my garden and tear up all my vegetables, without paying me for the value. Ascending or descending there may be such perilous situations as may invite multitudes to go to the rescue. How ever, in extricating those in peril, the laitter will have to pay as prize money all damages a multitude of heroic rescuers may do. If an anchor to an air ship is allowed to drag and go skipping across country, picking up to destruction a cow, part of a roof or any thing else of value, the owner of the machine can expect to answer for the same. It is to be expected that the operators of the flyers will largely perform their work subject to the hazard of their employment. If aught is done to the machinery or the gearing or any part of the flyer by the em ployé, whereby he meets with an accident, it will, of course, be such contributory negli gence on the part of the employé as to make it impossible to legally resort to the employer. If the employé goes up in the discharge of his duties, and meets a tornado or simoon, which the weather bureau had not been able to get track of, and is stripped of a wing or the propeller is jammed, it will be an act of Providence, and in accepting the employment, the operator accepted the haz ard of everything Providence might put in his way or do unto him. If, however, a wire less came out of the heavens telling that it was not safe for flying things to be abroad among the winds, and the employer, not withstanding the wireless warning, sends the operator on- a trip, the hazard will likely be transferred to the employer and the. em ployé on such rare occasions will not be non suited. As to passengers it may be surmised that those who have paid their fares for a safe journey will not only be entitled to what their tickets called for, but also a safe going up and coming down. Deadheads will take their lives in their hands when they step aboard a liver. If having paid for a safe trip,