The Judge accepted that this was the case but ruled that in the final analysis that it was for the Court to determine whether even the most widely followed practice was acceptable. Lord Woolf M.R. 11. An overview of key case law relating to negligent - LawInSport 82. Match. I consider that the Judge could properly have done so. The psychologist sees the child and carries out an assessment. Has the law encroached too far into the world of sport? - The Telegraph The position as to the selection of doctors for a contest that prevailed in 1991 was as follows. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control (2001). A book of rules and regulations 58 pages in length provides, in detail, for the manner in which professional boxing is to be carried on. Get 1 point on providing a valid sentiment to this The ambulance should be prepared to go direct to the Neurological unit that had been placed on stand-by. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control explained 63. 64. In answer to a claim by the workman, the architect argued that his only duty was the contractual duty that he owed to the owners of the building. 125. The probability must therefore have been that he could have been among those patients who would have had a favourable outcome, or no circumstance peculiar to his physical make-up has been identified to suggest why that should not be so". The medical room should be situated in close proximity to the boxer's dressing rooms and be reasonable accessible to and from the ring. Lord Browne-Wilkinson answered this question in the affirmative. The Board also argued that the nearest hospital with an Accident and Emergency Department was so close that a system which delayed the possibility of resuscitation for the few minutes that would be necessary to get to the hospital, was satisfactory. The latter have the role of protecting the public in general against risks, which they play no part in creating. The police have been held to owe no duty to respond to a 999 call or, having done so, to exercise reasonable care to prevent a burglary Alexandrou v. Oxford [1993] 4 All ER 328 [1994] 4 All ER 328. The facilities include a scheme which enables members to construct and fly their own light aircraft. 7. I personally don't think that the decision to follow option B as opposed to option A had any material affect upon Watson.", The Medical facilities provided to Mr Watson at the ringside, 102. 2. 50. Instead he argued that even if resuscitation had been used, it would have been used too late to affect the outcome. First he submitted that the Board exercises a public function which it has assumed for the public good. . It is on this basis that it is possible to draw a distinction between the doctor who goes to the assistance of the victim of a road accident and the hospital that receives that victim into its casualty department. The fight was terminated at 22.54. Whenever they accept a patient for treatment, they must use reasonable care and skill to cure him of his ailment.". I shall revert to the details of this when I come to consider the question of breach. Michael Alexander Watson v British Boxing Board of Control Ltd, World Flashcards. An operation was carried out to remove a moderate size haematoma and to close such veins as were found to be oozing blood. at p.262 which I have set out above. Each venue must have a room set aside exclusively for medical purposes. The history of the Board can be traced back to the middle of the nineteenth century, but the Board itself was constituted as an unincorporated association in 1929. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Alexandrou v Oxford (1933), Maguire v Harland & Wolff PLC (2005), Calvert v William Hill (2008) and more. The Board argued that, until they received such advice, they could not reasonably be expected to alter their recommendations and rules in relation to ringside treatment. The child's parents will seldom be in a position to know whether the psychologist's advice was sound or not. This reasoning was followed by the House of Lords in Phelps v Hillingdon Borough Council [2000] 3 WLR 776. My reaction is the same as that of Buxton L.J. Despite this statement, Ian Kennedy J. suggested that where there was a potential for physical injury there was no need to go beyond the test of foreseeability in deciding whether a duty of care existed, relying on Perrett v. Collins [1998] 255. Chris Eubank and Michael Watson's horror fight, negligence and terrible As for the argument that the local authorities were vicariously liable for negligence on the part of those giving them advice, Lord Browne-Wilkinson held at pp.752-3: "The claim based on vicarious liability is attractive and simple. He had in fact sustained a brain haemorrhage and, after returning to his corner, he lapsed into unconsciousness on his stool. PFA was not a commercial undertaking. Likewise, a doctor who happened to witness a road accident will very likely go to the assistance of anyone injured, but he is not under any legal obligation to do so, save in certain limited circumstances which are not relevant, and the relationship of doctor and patient does not arise. That argument was rejected. 14. The peculiar features of the duty of care alleged are as follows: i) the duty alleged is not to take reasonable care to avoid causing personal injury. The body set up by the Board that gave particular consideration to safety standards was a Medical Committee, sometimes referred to as The Medical Panel, that was set up in 1950. The next ground advanced by the Board in support of the contention that the Judge applied too high a standard, was that there was no evidence that any other boxing authority in the World imposed more rigorous requirements than those of the Board's rules. Flashcards. At the North Middlesex Hospital he was intubated, that is an endotrachael tube was inserted, and he was given oxygen. It was Mr Walker's submission that there was no reliance. PDF COLLECTION OF SPORTS-RELATED CASE-LAW - Olympic Games 20. in that case. A boxer who suffered brain damage following a title fight in London alleged that the Board which regulates boxing had been negligent in not providing a better level of ringside medical care. It much have been in the contemplation of the architect that builders would go on the site as the whole object of the work was to erect building there. James George, James George. A doctor, an accountant and an engineer are plainly such a person. 3.5.2 For British and Commonwealth Championship contests only, or These cases turned upon the assumption of responsibility to an individual. Without so doing, however, the Judge concluded that for some reason no thought was given to the practicality of introducing at the ringside what he found had been a standard response, where the presence of sub-dural bleeding was known or suspected, since at least 1980. He submitted that, having regard to the chaos prevailing at the end of the fight, Mr Watson would not have received medical attention for seven minutes, even if the Hamlyn protocol had been in place. Nearly half an hour elapsed between the end of the fight and the time that he got there. While Buxton L.J. Only about twenty-five British boxers succeeded in earning a full-time living from the sport. There was no contract between the parties, but boxers had to fight under the Board's rules. She claimed the respondent was liable under the Act and at common law for failing to keep it safe. First, Watson is apparently the first reported case in which the English In these circumstances the claim against Mr Usherwood was a conventional claim for carelessness causing direct and foreseeable personal injury. radio By this time, however, he had sustained serious brain damage. In fact, it took very much longer than a few minutes to get to the hospital, for reasons that were not identified at the trial. Nothing that I have heard persuades me that there was any impracticality, whether in terms of manpower or in cost to the promoters, in the Board having included such a requirement in their rules. Next Mr. Walker argued that if the Board had made its Rules pursuant to a statutory power it would be tolerably clear that it could not be held liable in negligence in relation to the manner in which it chose to exercise its discretion. Had the Board's rules required Mr Hamlyn's protocol to be put in place, the doctors present could have been expected to have resorted to resuscitation. Lord Steyn, however, gave short shrift to an argument based on assumption of responsibility: "Given that the cargo owners were not even aware of N.K.K. This concludes my summary of the facts which I consider material to the question of whether the Board owed a duty of care to Mr Watson. 110. ii) the duty alleged is not directly, through the servants or agents of the Board to provide proper facilities and administer proper treatment to those injured. He won a historic High Court case in Sept 1999, raising questions about the future of the professional sport in the UK. The agreed time of reception at the hospital was 23.22. In an open letter to BMA delegates, written some time in the 1980's, Dr Whiteson, the Chief Medical Officer to the Board, wrote "The British Boxing Board of Control is justifiably proud of its reputation of being in the vanguard of the protection of professional boxers." 39. 3. The promoters and the boxers do not themselves address considerations of safety. He was brought in by the education authority to assist it in carrying out its educational functions. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control (1999) (QBD) During a professional boxing contest, the claimant suffered a sub-dural haemorrhage resulting in irreversible brain damage which left him with, among other things, a left-sided partial paralysis. 78. 9. 60. Watson v British Board of Boxing Control: QBD 12 Oct 1999 There had been a number of similar cases in the 1980's. 2. Michael Watson was injured in a boxin deprecated the introduction of tests such as `proximity' and `fair just and reasonable' in a situation where it was reasonably foreseeable that a failure to exercise reasonable care would cause personal injury: "They also illustrate the dangers of substituting for clear criteria, criteria which are incapable of precise definition and involve what can only be described as an element of subjective assessment by the Court: such ultimately subjective assessments tend inevitably to lead to uncertainty and anomaly which can be avoided by a more principled approach". Furthermore, if an ambulance service is called and agrees to attend the patient, those caring for the patient normally abandon any attempt to find an alternative means of transport to the hospital". In the event those same procedures could not have been begun before 23.25 at the earliest, to allow some time for an examination after the claimant's recorded time of arrival at the North Middlesex. 13. 74. 22. This involved taking precautions or giving instructions for them to be taken so that the work could be done with safety. ii) rules designed to restrict the physical injuries that may be caused in the course of the fight; iii) rules designed to secure that a boxer receives appropriate medical attention when injured in the course of a fight. 1. 255.". a) A requirement that a boxer must be medically examined before being granted a licence, together with a list of medical conditions that preclude the grant of a licence. Throughout these contests the boxers' performance should be noted and any untoward medical problems arising should be reported to the Area Council or Board. In such circumstances A's conduct can accurately be described as the assumption of responsibility for B, whether `responsibility' is given its lay or legal meaning. Elr, Recueil JP 01.02 3 a) Case of Michels v USOC (United States Court of Appeals - 7th circuit, 16 August 1984)40 B. Negligence and Duty of Care in Sport - JNP Legal 83. Where a blow to the head results in immediate impairment or loss of consciousness, this is normally the result of temporary deformation of the brain caused by acceleration or deceleration of movement of the head. The Judge did not find that the lapse of time between Mr Watson becoming unconscious and Dr Shapiro being called to assist was critical. I now come to the second special feature of this case - the fact that the Board is not charged with having failed itself to provide appropriate medical treatment, but with having failed to impose rules and regulations which would have ensured that others did so. 59. The Bout Agreement, which was subject to the sanction of the Board, provided that: "The bout will be conducted in accordance with the rules and regulations of the WBO and BBBC". 24. "The postulate of a simple duty to avoid any harm that is, with hindsight, reasonably capable of being foreseen becomes untenable without the imposition of some intelligible limits to keep the law of negligence within the bounds of common sense and practicality. Thus the criteria identified by Hobhouse L.J. The following rules fall into this category: 3.8 The promoter shall procure that two doctors, who must be approved by the Area Medical Officer, attend at all promotions, one of whom must be seated at the ringside at all times during the contest. iii) Those taking part in the activity, and Mr Watson in particular, relied upon the Board to ensure that all reasonable steps were taken to provide immediate and effective medical attention and treatment to those injured in the course of the activity. In the leading speech Lord Slynn advanced the following statement of principle at pp.790-1: "As to the first question, it is long and well-established, now elementary, that persons exercising a particular skill or profession may owe a duty of care in the performance to people who it can be foreseen will be injured if due skill and care are not exercised, and if injury or damage can be shown to have been caused by the lack of care. So far as the promoter was concerned, these delimited his obligations. While this may not be true of the volunteer who offers assistance at the scene of an accident, it will be true of a body whose purpose is or includes the provision of such assistance. The witness best placed to deal with the consideration, if any, given to this matter would have been Mr Whiteson. 62. Accordingly, I am left in no doubt that the Board was in breach of its duty in that it did not institute some such system or protocol as Mr Hamlyn was to propose. 25. 33. Therefore, it is said, it is nothing to the point that the social workers and psychiatrist only came into contact with the plaintiffs pursuant to contracts or arrangements made between the professionals and the local authority for the purpose of the discharge by the local authority of its statutory duties. . Boxer members of the Board, including Mr Watson, could reasonably rely upon the Board to have taken reasonable care in making provision for their safety. I agree that this appeal should be dismissed for the reasons given by Lord Phillips M.R. This duty involved the exercise of professional skills in investigating the circumstances of the plaintiffs and (in the Newham case) conducting the interview with the child. 34. Each case involved the performance by the local authority of duties imposed under statute for the benefit of children. While it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to avoid a degree of subjectivity when considering what is fair, just and reasonable, the approach must be to apply established principles and standards. A boxer member of the Board would not be aware of the details of all these matters. If it was held liable it might withdraw from its work, or have to pass on the cost of increased insurance to the detriment of small aircraft operators. It is not so much that responsibility is assumed as that it is recognised or imposed by the law.". Some boxers employed their own doctors. A British doctor's duty to offer help in emergencies outside of a
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