At 01:55 PM 2/28/00 +1100, Peter Treby wrote: >From Stephen Bird's posting:- >| >>Waivers are virtually useless. Win or lose a lawsuit can put a small >| >>operator out of business. >| >| I wonder how many operators have or can afford liability insurance? > >I wonder what clubs in the US do about potential liability for personal >injury. Our club here is currently going through a period of discussion >about how best to avoid problems. My take is:- >1. Be careful. You will be, but things go wrong anyway, so... >2. Agree on an exemption clause in the club's constitution excluding >liability, and ... >3. Carry suitable insurance, as exemption clauses are not reliable when >litigation follows. >Regards, Peter T. > > The Florida Sea Kayaking Association http://www.jacksonville.net/~dldecker/fska.htm is a ACA Paddle America club http://www.acanet.org/acanet.htm and uses the ACA insurance and release forms. I think release forms show that you tried to inform the paddlers that there is a danger. After years of talking about it and research, it is the best way for us to go. I would recommend it to any club(in the US). I never could find any validation of a club being sued, but liability issues keep many from being trip leaders. Near as I can find out after talking to many lawyers the most experienced paddler on the trip, whether they were leading the trip or not, would be the most liable, trip leader, then all the rest down the line. Several clubs have gone the route that they are not real clubs( no dues) and you go at your own risk, but the lawyers say the same liability as above (most experienced paddler)would take place. This advice was given free of charge from some paddling lawyers. Beside you can sue anybody for any reason whether it holds any water (pun) or not. Advice given to me personally was not to have any personal insurance or holdings for a lawyer to go after. This would not do outfitters, Companys or clubs any good , but sense I am just a poor kayaker who had to scrape up the money to pay the high registration fee for the Charleston symposium and don't own a pot to **** in I should be safe, but feel safer with the ACA behind me on club trips. Luckily I have never had a problem on a trip that would let me find out what really would happen. Dana I got a plug in for our club(FSKA) and the ACA and am affiliated to both :) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sun Feb 27 2000 - 20:33:03 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:20 PDT