Sport and LawSchools and Colleges And the Duty of Care
...m. The nature of people’s mind set today as opposed to when this happened in 1996 would mean that they would try and gain a financial settlement. This case would have gone to a civil court and would therefore go to the county court initially, this is due to the claimant not pressing criminal charges against the plaintiff. The case has a tort in it which is within the classification of trespass to a person and this was physical damage and consequently is called battery. The tort has been identified but the person being held as responsible one hasn’t, however it could be presumed that the tackler, ‘Player A‘ would be, or would it? Negligence is the term used and the duty of care is used as the deciding factor as to whether the plaintiff is proven innocent or guilty, negligence is looked upon by whether or not a reasonable man /woman would have foreseen the incident happening. This could therefore make the case one where the person being held as negligent is changed from the person having committed the act to somebody related to the incident indirectly, e.g. teacher/ coach/ official etc. The movement of blame is known as vicarious liability so if within the example case ‘Player A’ states he didn’t realise that high tackling wasn’t within the confines of the laws in rugby the next question is why not? If its discovered that the teacher failed to explain this rule then they would undoubtedly be liable for the incident for lacking to maintain the duty of care to their participants. With this case the blame could be passed on indefinitely through from ‘Player A’ to the teacher, to the school, to local education authorities and to the government. An easy way for these situations to be resolved without court appearances would be to ensure all session leaders have a respectable amount of knowledge of the discipline of which they are delivering. P.E teachers do not require specific coaching qualifications (BAALPE, 2004) which therefore leaves them open to taking sports that they know little about. If this situation is rectified with the suggested means, it minimises the chances of pupils not getting the information required to participate in the sports safely. This won’t necessarily stop accidents altogether but as mentioned it should mean the health and safety of the group when performing within the sessions is improved. “All teachers are expected to act in loco parentis, exercising the same degree of responsibility for the pupils in their care as would any reasonably careful parent when looking after his or her own children.” BAALPE, 2004 If the teachers act as BAALPE suggests above then they will not be negligent towards anybody within the group and it would be clear that there would not be a breach of duty of care as a prudent parent simply wouldn’t allow this. Recklessness towards individuals will not be an issue nor towards the group, accidents happen however if they are not foreseeable no blame can be issued clearing the teachers of all forms of negligence. A test case with which the example could be compared would be Smoldon v Whitworth, C.A [1997] PIQR P133; this case had a rugby referee found liable for breach of duty by allowing a scrum to collapse numerous times showing a reckless disregard for the players safety and this repeated action eventually meant that a player gained serious injury. This case is the comparison being used as it is an example of limited information being passed on by the “leader” to the participants, if the referee had demanded that the scrum was set up right or identified the cause of the collapse and given that responsible party a warning this limit’s the chances of the act reoccurring. It simply seems that the referee showed a lack of knowledge towards the game and the situation which caused the injury as with the example. Within the debate of whether sport requires legalities and the law involved could come down to the standard of participation of its competitors. If amateur level participation is viewed and analysed the players taking part receive no money for the time they give to their sport, bearing this in mind they undoubtedly require a job or another means of income to survive. If whilst participating in the activity of which they have chosen an injury is inflicted and there is a breach of duty of care that prevents them earning their typical income then this person is missing out on ear...