liability for an "accident"

[bednobs]

hi, i help run a sports club. Yesterday, one of the participants fell over a peice of equipment (while using it) and broke their leg (completely accidentally, nothing to do with the equipment being faulty) Do i have any liability for this accident as the person the club belongs to?

[Count-A-Strong]

1. define 'participant' i.e. what were they doing?
2. Are they a regular user of the club?
3. Was the equipment stored or in use?
4. You say you own the club but start of by saying 'I help run'. Which is it?
5. If you are the owner do you have Public Liability insurance?

[bednobs]

yes we do have pl insurance
1) they are actively doing the sport whilt the accident occurred
2) yes regular (does that make a difference to my liability?)
3) in use
4) the club was started by me and my husband. Al documents (including insurance) is in both our names
5) as above

[bednobs]

sorry for the poor spelling

[cassa333]

Surely if you have the proper insurance they should sort it out if a claim were to be made?

[boxtops]

The critical point here will be if you can be proved negligent, if you can then any claim would succeed, if you can't, it won't. Insurance law (and yes I did work in this field for many years) says (in brief) that if there is a reasonable expectation that an accident might happen, then it can be expected that it might, and you need to do something about it, otherwise you are negligent. If in your instance the client say tripped over the leg of a rowing machine, then they knew the rowing machine leg was there and could reasonably say that this was an accident and nobody's "fault". As others say, if you should receive a letter from the person or their solicitors suggesting that a claim is being made, just acknowledge it - making no apologies, that is important - but acknowledging receipt of the letter and saying that you are passing it to your insurance company, then send the letter on to them straight away. They are set up to investigate everything like this. Incidentally, I hope you recorded this incident in your accident book when it happened?

[bednobs]

yes we did, although we didn't know she'd broken her leg at the time. We do have proper insurance and to be honest, i think it would be better if she could claim (she is having to have an op that will mean she can't work, no sick pay in her job etc) i also wonder about the long term effects, but i think that PL insurance means that to claim, you have to be Liable, and i think we are not

[bednobs]

thanks :) we don't run it as a business, we don't make any money. Although we charge people to participate it is minimal (£1) and the money goes towards buying equipment

[chas2008]

very grey area, a no win no fee specialist solicitor will find some angle towards negligence, a sign of the times im afraid,
But as every one says as you have PL insurance its up to them to sort it