2010-11 NFHS Rule Changes

[Mark Padgett]

Every kid in our local kids rec league is covered by an insurance policy we pay for (costs are covered by registration fees) against injury plus all parents must sign a waiver of liability to protect the league and it's representatives including officials. This has been in effect for over 20 years and was instituted by a former Board member who is a personal injury attorney.

[Judtech]

JRut - I was giving the offiical the benefit of the doubt in passing the state test. If said official had NOT passed the test and was officiating a sanctioned game as an official who was NOT certified....wow, that would be a home run for the plantiff.

JUST - The play you described would easily fit under an assumption of risk clause. Further it would have no bearing on the case as this was a case regarding a concussion not a torn ACL. Now if you wanted to show a pattern of negligence, you may be allowed to introduce evidence that shows a history of injuries during this officials game but that may or may not work. If you were to actually be allowed to use that defense, it would be very easy to get video of 1000s of "missed travel" calls that resulted in no injury whatsoever. The point being that iti is a reasonable to assume that 'missed travels' do not result in debilitating injuries. To push the point, show video of contact that caused concussions, preferably, one that looks a WHOLE LOT like the contact in the lawsuit. Finally, you are actually making the plantiff's case for them. IF you are arguing that this official should enforce the traveling rule, then it shold follow that the official should be required to enforce the rule on concussions.

MBYRON - Amen brother!

[JRutledge]

Judtech: Are you a lawyer? (Very serious question bTW)

This is why I think the NF has really errored on this issue. There really is no way we should be identifying specific injuries. All we should be doing is determining if a player is injured, not trying to determine what kind of injury and something like a head injury. ESPN's "E:60" last night did a story on a player that had multiple concussions in football games and was debilitated. I am not sure this is something we can identify from our position. I have no problem sending off a kid that is not able to play or appears to play, but not diagnose why they cannot play and then be partly responsible for if they come back in the game. As I said before football has cleaned up or clarified this on some level, but why even open this up to us. We do not know many of the situations a kid might identify such an injury. And if officials have been sued for calls in games and injunctions were held to allow the court to review whether someone advances in the playoffs, why would we not expect some lawyer to try to find some reason to sue an official over some language the NF decided to put into the situation? These are Doctor, coaches, schools and a parent issue, not an officiating issue.

Peace

[Kelvin green]

Originally Posted by Mark Padgett

Every kid in our local kids rec league is covered by an insurance policy we pay for (costs are covered by registration fees) against injury plus all parents must sign a waiver of liability to protect the league and it's representatives including officials. This has been in effect for over 20 years and was instituted by a former Board member who is a personal injury attorney.

Just a couple of things

-Insurance covers things but insurance can seek to recover their costs. (just ask the football officiating crew that was sued because a coach was run over by an official when the coach was on the field..

- Basketball has dangers and playing it will create some sort of assumption of the risk.

-The standard practice is many states is to have parents sign liability waivers for their kids. It really has limited effect (put parents on notice etc) However in some states parents can waiver THEIR ability to claim but parents cannot waive the rights of a minor to seek damages...( Parents cant sue if they waive but minor still can with a guardian ad litem)

-Most negligence cases are decided because the party did not exercise the care of a reasonable person (in our case a reasonable referee) Of course we know many unreasonable refs but that is a different story. All we have to do is exercise appropriate care. In the case of the concussion, although not obvious all the time you can tell why the player went down.... If it appears that there are the blackouts, dizziness etc we tell the coach we are invoking the concussion rule and if there is any error it will be made on the safety of the child. The player does not come in until released by a physician.

[Mark Padgett]

We also carry D&O insurance that protects our Board members if something happens while acting in their capacity as a Board member. Unfortunately, it doesn't cover our referees because they are all independent contractors. It won't cover me when acting as a referee even though I'm on the Board.

[Mark Padgett]

I can just see me in court now on a concussion case.

Judge: "So later in the game, when he stumbled off the bench, walked around in circles bumping into things and was babbling incoherently, you didn't think there was anything wrong?"

Me: "Are you referring to the player or the coach?"