News & Events

Hack  JJJ
Friday 1 April 2011

Tom Tilley:
Watching head injuries happen on TV is one thing, but there’s a good chance you, or someone you know, has been concussed or seriously injured during an amateur sports game.  As I said before, I’ve been concussed a few times myself.  So to bring you up to speed with who is liable in the case of serious injuries in amateur sport, we put the question to Paul Horvath.  He’s the principle lawyer at Sports Lawyer in Melbourne. 
For people listening that play registered amateur sports, what sort of protection are they signing up for when they go through the proper registration process?

Paul Horvath:
Tom, broadly speaking, a lot of these sports have, in fact all sports, would have public liability insurance.  Generally speaking, there’s a principle that says that an athlete that competes in a sporting event makes a voluntary assumption of the risk, that is, that you know that certain injuries may flow from your participation in sport. 

Tom Tilley:
So, you take your own risks there, to a large extent?

Paul Horvath:
To a large extent. 

Tom Tilley:
So, what about the situation where someone’s playing in their local rugby or AFL competition and they get a head injury that leads to serious complications down the track?  Who takes liability there?

Paul Horvath:
If I just take you to an example that arose in rugby union about ten or fifteen years ago.  A few players received broken necks in the courses of scrums because of the way those scrums were being assembled, and they took, I think it was the national and international rugby union to court because they received broken necks.  So, very serious injuries.  At least one of those claims was unsuccessful but it led to a change to the scrum rules so there’s a specific process so that the umpires and the players have to follow to ensure that those injuries don’t occur, and I guess what that tells you is that once the peak body governing the sport became aware of an injury concern, they needed to address it otherwise, if in future an injury occurred, once they were fully aware of it, then they could be liable.  So the question is, was the injury reasonably foreseeable in the first place?  Should you have foreseen that such an injury would occur?  And if you did, then that’s part of your duty of care to reduce the chance of that injury occurring.

Tom Tilley:
So, if it’s an extreme case where the sporting organisation couldn’t have foreseen it, you have to take responsibility yourself?

Paul Horvath:
Yes, that’s right.

Tom Tilley:
Paul Horvath, thanks for joining us on Hack.

Paul Horvath:
It’s a pleasure Tom.

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