TO Liability

[Kone]

Needing help here.

I just recently hosted a quite large European tournament (SNY/120 people). Previously I have hosted various UK national tournaments aswell as local get togethers etc etc.

During SNY I became increasingly aware of how liable I am as the TO legally if anything were to happen (violence/theft/injury/drink/drugs etc). Obviously this is something I have put thought into before and make rules clear both on threads and at the tournament itself. Furthermore,I always have a mature and trustworthy staff reminding individuals of what is acceptable behaviour etc.

However, the venue I use is very large and has alot of rooms e.g. there is a gym hall/kitchen/various lounges/garden/dinning room and three floors of bedrooms. I can not always be 100% sure of what is going on.

What I would like to know is what other TOs have done to make sure that their tournaments are ran as safely as possible AND to cover their own backs. I have already booked the venue for a second SNY and am expecting a 200+ turnout next summer.

Should I be looking to form an official body for our community and taken out group insurance for the event? I know the French have done something similar (shloka you around to shed light on that?). Just worried as I have recently qualified as a Teacher..........

Feeling quite naive so some help would be benefitial

 

[KishPrime]

For FC, we hired a cop for the nighttime hours, had a lawyer draw up a waiver, and took out group insurance.

However, we had the budget to do that. Most large tournaments wouldn't.

 

[Kone]

Thanks for the reply. Just finding this a troublesome issue. I had looked into group insurance prior to the event but then have had difficulty finding out how to register a non profit organisation here in the UK (still am). I would definetly take out group insurance regardless of the price.

 

[Slhoka]

That's an useful topic : this part of tournament hosting is often forgotten, in my opinion.

Should I be looking to form an official body for our community and taken out group insurance for the event? I know the French have done something similar (shloka you around to shed light on that?). Just worried as I have recently qualified as a Teacher..........

The thing is that we are registered as a non profit-organisation, primarily because it makes things a bit easier to get venues. And since we were registered, we were able to get a insurance contract which supposedly covers any accident or theft. I don't know the details though, and I should check that (but French paperwork is so bad I always put that off till tomorrow )

I think you should try to gather information on the pro and cons of creating a organization, to see if it's worth it. Otherwise, you may want to ask your insurance company about that, they must know about that.

 

[Kone]

Did you have to pay a fee to register as a non profit organisation?

 

[Slhoka]

Did you have to pay a fee to register as a non profit organisation?

In France, yes, around 37€ or something. But it must be different in the UK.
Otherwise everything is quite easy to do, because France has always encouraged non-profit organization and made things quite simple to promote them as much as possible.

 

[Kone]

Hmm I don't mind paying that amount but obviously need to find out much it is for the UK. It isn't promoted as readily here, in fact, I am finding it very difficult to locate online how to register a club :s. May require a few phone calls to CAB.

 

[Slhoka]

Hmm I don't mind paying that amount but obviously need to find out much it is for the UK. It isn't promoted as readily here, in fact, I am finding it very difficult to locate online how to register a club :s. May require a few phone calls to CAB.

I don't know the exact difference, but I noticed that our association is actually a voluntary association and not a non-profit organization. It seems there's a difference in some countries, but in France, the law is made so that pretty much every voluntary association is a NPO, so I can't really help you about that.

 

[AlphaZealot]

What Kish said.

Though when MLG did the underground circuit, I think they just have everyone sign a waiver that...covered everything. I don't know if there was group insurance provided by MLG or not (I know FC had it but that was under the Kishes own amazingness, as Prime already noted).

You can probably find some free template waivers online that could cover your butt.

 

[KishPrime]

Or maybe we could dig up ours, though since you're in another country, not sure it would have the same effect. We didn't have to formally register any kind of organization here for group insurance.

Waivers still don't cover you from everything, hence the insurance. They have very limited application in court.

 

[Tero.]

I allways had waivers at my bigger events, but I don't have them anymore.
In fact I need to make a new one for my tournament at the weekend would be even better if someone can post his so I can copy some things =P

 

[Kone]

Yeah Kish I would appreciate if you dug your waiver out . Just to get an idea of what you included!

 

[Skler]

Couldn't your wavier just be something like "The TO/organization is not responsible for any injuries, theft, damage to personal items, drug use, or other events that may occur at the venue."

Then a little section saying you reserve the right to kick anybody out for any reason, especially those listed above. I'm no lawyer or Kish, but I did see three seconds of Judge Judy while flipping through the channels once!

<professional lawyer>

 

[KishPrime]

I asked Jeff if he has the file...as I recall he was managing things there. If we can dig it out I'll probably just post the language. Alternatively, if I can find the stack of waivers (which I think we've since discarded, being that it's been 3 years since the last FC), I'll scan one and post.

 

[Marc]

Us Dutchies are also quite interested. =]

 

[KishPrime]

Jeff said he has it, but it's on a computer he has in storage. He said he'd try to pull it out tonight.

 

[Tero.]

That'd be awesome.
Maybe I can even use some of this stuff for my tournament this weekend.

 

[Kone]

Yeah it would be hugely appreciated. I do think this is an element to tournament organising that far too easily gets over looked

 

[Marc]

Well, it's not often something actually happens.

 

[Kone]

No, but when you have 100+ people rather than say 40 you are definetly increasing yours chances of an occurence. Regardless, you just need one slip up :s. I had alot of reservations about this before SNY and am definetly wanting it resolved for SNY2. Reservations came from the Comp situation after Edster a few years back which ended me running tournaments for sometime/promoting European involvement at my tournaments.

Especially important for myself as teaching is a trust profession and I can't have anything happen at events I run that may discredit me on my CRB.

 

[Marc]

Oh, I fully agree with covering your bases and that incident as well as your job are legit reasons to want to sort it out. Better safe than sorry. In smash history though, I think only the Kishes really delved into this and made a conscious choice to purchase insurance with their budget.

 

[KishPrime]

That's probably because we were very liable adults with jobs and families.

No luck last night, Jeff forgot and I forgot to call him. Oops.

 

[Slhoka]

Oh, I fully agree with covering your bases and that incident as well as your job are legit reasons to want to sort it out. Better safe than sorry. In smash history though, I think only the Kishes really delved into this and made a conscious choice to purchase insurance with their budget.

We did it for ESA1.
Also, Cycom did have insurance for some of the ESAs. I tried to see if I could find the papers we had to sign for ESA2, but I couldn't find them.

And, yeah, you only need one incident to be in trouble, so this isn't anaspect we should overlook anymore.

 

[Alex Strife]

What I would like to know is what other TOs have done to make sure that their tournaments are ran as safely as possible AND to cover their own backs. I have already booked the venue for a second SNY and am expecting a 200+ turnout next summer.

Should I be looking to form an official body for our community and taken out group insurance for the event? I know the French have done something similar (shloka you around to shed light on that?). Just worried as I have recently qualified as a Teacher..........

I have been thinking about this as well.

Nothing against people but I have become too trust worthy. I will be looking into some insurance via VG bootcamp to really help myself out.

I'd def recommend that but do not disclose that to players as they take things out of context.

 

[Slhoka]

What about emergency situations ? Are you prepared to handle this ?

Two years ago, at ESA2, the Spaniards pulled a prank on me : one of them was lying still on the floor, with a ****ing stylo looking like a syringe near his arm. It may have been a joke (and a bad one, you don't do that to a TO who's meeting you for the first time during a tournament where a ****load of big problems happen), but ever since this day, I've been scared to be confronted to an emergency situation like this.
Apart from calling the EMS (or 911 or whatever it is for you), I must say I wouldn't know what to do to make sure the situation doesn't get worse. I used not to pay too much attention on this matter because of a good friend who's a medicine student, but he quit smash so now I'm worried again.
I think I'll attend some sort of lessons to learn what to do in such emergency situations, because I think that when you decide to host an event, you also decide to take care of the attendants (to a certain extent).

 

[Alex Strife]

To deal with situations like that you HAVE to be calm. if its an issue with someone having a seizure, bleeding , or anything the key is remain calm and help the person out if possible.

Keep them steady and call the EMTs. They will walk you through everything.

 

[Marc]

That's probably because we were very liable adults with jobs and families.

No luck last night, Jeff forgot and I forgot to call him. Oops.

It's been a month and we hosted two events in the meantime, any news on this?

 

[AlphaZealot]

I just realized that I may be lucky when I hold tournaments at my fraternity. The event is likely covered under the fraternities insurance policy (so long as I register the event). I'm gonna make sure to do that for the next one (Oct 30th).