Trip Organisers, are we legally responsible

[richarddbarker]

A question to any legal eagles out there.

I'm a member of a club which organises trips on an informal basis. We are trying to work out if our Trip Secretaries need liability insurance.

The Trip secretaries are not dive marshals and take no official responsiblity for anybody on the trip. All the divers on a trip are qualified and are expected to dive to their own abilities and qualification level.

In order to have liability insurance would we need to check that every dive was suitable for the divers on that trip i.e qualification and experience level ?

I'd appreciate any comments from people with a legal background.

[Janos]

Originally Posted by richarddbarker

The Trip secretaries are not dive marshals and take no official responsiblity for anybody on the trip....

I'm not a legal eagle, but reading this it sounds as if your trip secretaries could be interpreted as acting as dive marshals. Remember in the UK signing a piece of paper or having an 'agreement' does not necessarily absolve you from responsibility, although it can act as a mitigating factor.

IMHO there are two ways to do it:
1) Get everyone to book on independently or as buddy pairs
2) Go the whole hog and marshall it fully.

Anywhere in between and it's for the lawyers to decide in court when it goes wrong.

Sorry to be morbid and talking about things going wrong but it's hard not to be when talking about insurance.

Laters,
Janos

PS - I'm not a lawyer, so I'm sure one of m'learned friends will be along in a mo' to correct me where I've gone wrong.

[colinicky]

it might help to contact blonde inside as she asked a similar question recently & i know that sdhe located an insurance through DAN i beleive that covered a multitude of things and was resonably priced .
hope this helps

[chrisch]

Its a while since I was at Uni and studied contract and business law. But an educated guess would be it depends on the status of the "club". The club's articles of association should give a clue as to the relationship of the members.

Clubs are wierd things legally. AFAIK even BSAC's individual branches can have different articles so some branches have one situation and another might be different.

Best get professional advice (wot you needs to pay for like).

Chris

[wreckweasel]

Weeeeell, its a sticky wicket.

To avoid being in a position where you can be buttonholed, I personally would;

• Make no profit (key point, that includes free trip spaces etc)
• Specify the site/depth and say "all divers must be qualified, competent and experienced at this depth". (this puts the liability on the student/certifying agency)
• Not organise any dive plans (I've done it in the past where we've put stuff on for ourselves and said "if you want to use it, its your call")
• Not get involved in anything more, its their dive/their call/their risk

I think that can be called "reasonable risk management"... oh and the other tip, if they ask "am I up to it" the answer has to be "no", if they were, they wouldn't be asking!


/Zak

[Ian@1904]

Originally Posted by wreckweasel

Weeeeell, its a sticky wicket.

To avoid being in a position where you can be buttonholed, I personally would;

• Make no profit (key point, that includes free trip spaces etc)
• Specify the site/depth and say "all divers must be qualified, competent and experienced at this depth". (this puts the liability on the student/certifying agency)
• Not organise any dive plans (I've done it in the past where we've put stuff on for ourselves and said "if you want to use it, its your call")
• Not get involved in anything more, its their dive/their call/their risk

I think that can be called "reasonable risk management"... oh and the other tip, if they ask "am I up to it" the answer has to be "no", if they were, they wouldn't be asking!


/Zak

Specify a max depth for the diving and minimum dive qualification typically BSAC Sports Diver or PADI AOW.

I would add check dive qualifications and log book for recent dive experience before they get on the boat.

If you have never dived with them before, do a check out dive at an inland site-I have been through this with a local BSAC club-before I joined BSAC.

Insist on certain levels of kit-eg all divers have dsmb and know how to use it

Contact numbers for relatives

A friend of mine, that arranges trips, collects money via a bank account held by a local solicitor. They have control over the bank account for him-makes it harder to abscond with peoples deposits.

Take out liability insurance with DAN

[PaulC]

The short and the long of it is that if you have an incident on one of the trips you've organised, you could get sued by the person involved - or their next of kin. What with 'no win - no fee' these days, the fact that you are totally innocent and not liable at all might not save you from a hefty bill for legal fees you can't recoup. So I would say that you should carry insurance, definitely. The premiums might not be too killing if you're doing it on an 'organise only' basis. I would however think that you would be well advised to check people's level of certification and recent dive history - that needn't be too much of a drama. Another way of doing it is to 'facilitate' i.e. you give people the contact details of the boat you're going on but leave it to them to make the call and place their booking, on a 'I'll be on this boat for this dive, why not give them a call if you fancy joining me' sort of basis - that should leave you in the clear on liability I would have thought. But all in all, your trip organisers might just appreciate the extra quality of sleep they'll get if they know they're covered by insurance.

[richarddbarker]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. Certainly confirms some of the concerns that had already been raised at the club.

I guess we'll be looking into some kind of liability insurance and the possibility of additional checks prior to allowing bookings.