476 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 3 MAY 2022
“Next Friday we will be serving hot gods for lunch.”
“The church will host an evening of fine dining, superb entertainment, and
gracious hostility.”
“The service will close with Little Drops of Water. One of the ladies will start
quietly and the rest of the congregation will join in.”
Outside Online reported in late 2021 on the settlement of a lawsuit that a disgruntled
customer had commenced in the United States against an American
guide who had, for safety reasons, called off an attempt to summit
Mount Everest. The customer claimed breach of contract and fraud. The
guide’s concern had apparently been peril to the expedition from a hanging
ice block, which the customer commented – while still pursuing the lawsuit
– was a “red herring”: “there are hanging seracs all over the west wall of
Everest. It’s like saying we can’t walk through the forest until that particular
tree falls down.”
The parties’ settlement included a provision acknowledging that the guide
and his company were the “prevailing” and “successful” parties, and stated
that “the fear of lawsuits and the financial repercussions from lawsuits can
lead to injuries, illnesses, and fatalities for clients, guides, Sherpa, and other
mountain professionals.” The guiding and outdoor adventure industry
viewed the outcome with relief, with one adventure consultant noting, “The
real fear within the industry would be that we would get sued every time
we made a decision that a client did not like”, mindful that “the typical
client on Everest has always included business leaders…and high rollers,
some of whom decide that it is they who should be dictating decisions on
the mountain.”
The guide’s law firm, Baker and Hostetler, acted on a pro bono basis, and
lawyer Doug Grady noted that potential implications for Sherpa were
among the drivers in doing so: “They bear most of the climbing burden and
often take the biggest risks”, and while “it is one thing for Sherpa to knowingly
take those risks as paid mountain professionals, it is quite another for
the American legal system to create unhealthy pressures that make their
jobs even more dangerous.”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “serac” as “a pinnacle, sharp ridge,
or block of ice among the crevasses of a glacier”.
The disability program of the U.S. Social Service Administration has been
called “the Mount Everest of bureaucratic structures”: Kane v. Heckler, 731
F.2d 1216 (5th Cir. 1984), citing Paul Verkuil, “Review: Self-Legitimating
Bureaucracy” (1984) 93 Yale L. Rev. 780.