Quote:
Originally Posted by lovechild
just to digress....what has been the biggest payout on the BRCA insurance?...just out of interest.
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£32k - several people all injured in one accident, fortunatly all relativley lightly.
To Elaborate - As it's obvious that people still haven't read the rule book judging by a few posts above...
On average it's 2 or 3 'incidents' a year that result in heaps of paperwork for all involved, some of these will result in a payment from our insurers, some not.
Generally where a claim has proper substance to it, the insurers pay, however we do get as many "try it on's" as pukka 'real' cases - unfortunatly the former have to be gone through, at length, too.
There have been a couple of claims over the decades that would have made the above look like small change - and would have drastically changed the sport too - had they been succesful / reasonable.
This last bit is where the Insurance Co really earns their keep, the claims made all make 'allegations of negligence' (That's how P.L. cover works) IF some of these allegations were found to have substance it could force changes to how the sport operates.
On one or two occasions there have been claims made that, had they been succesfull, could have seen the sport - as we know it - cease to exist or be so radically altered that you wouldn't want to do it.
As an example - a simple one:-
The last claim from a 'No Win No Fee' company involved a member of the public having a fall from a clubs rostrum (not on a race day - they we're closed at the time - nobody from the club present and the claimant was both larking about and had to break a local bylaw to be on it)
The last four bits are nowadays basically irrelevant - still the clubs problem.
So
There were numerous allegations of negligence, and each one was succesfully defended - but it takes time, resources and money to do this.
Had this claim been succesfull it probably would have had instant implications for any club in the country with a permanent rostrum - i.e. most of them wouldn't have been able to exist..
Public Liability cover is not simply 'Make a claim and somebody pays'
It is possibly easiest to explain it as:-
An 'Allegation of Neglignce' that, if proved, you are insured against.
This is why it's hard to give catagoric 'what if' answers to scenarios, as you are then trying to predict what Allegations are going to come in - and you honestly wouldn't believe what I've seen over the years..
However what our policy does do is:-
Work.
It's kept us all racing for the last 30odd years, there have been some changes to the General Rules to reflect some of the succesful Allegations, and the procedures at events have been tweked to to ensure we don't drop the ball too.
It's defended hundreds of members in that time and kept the sport viable to officiate in at all levels (Club especially)
I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you run any event for people and the organisers / participants don't have P.L. cover in place then you must be stark staring bonkers.
Everybody reading this will know somebody who's won a tenner (£25 now?) on the lottery - we'll the odds are shorter that your club will be sorting through some Insurance Claim paperwork with me at some point in the next 12 months
So back to my earlier post..
If in doubt read the handbook and the article on insurance in it, or simply ASK - make certain you're 100% confident before posting on the web too, as it saves me typing to correct folk
