Page 50 - Misconduct a Reference for Race Officials

ensure that all participants were duly insured. If as consequence of the
organiser’s negligent failure to ensure that all participants were insured the
injured participant suffered loss (in so far as they were unable to recover
compensation from the uninsured participant) then the injured participant might
seek to recover the shortfall from the organiser. The RYA is not aware of such an
argument having succeeded in legal proceedings to date but there nevertheless
remains a risk that it might.

It is also questionable as to what inspecting insurance certificates actually
achieves. As Lord Woolf expressly acknowledged in the Gwilliam case there is
no guarantee, for example, that a policy has not been cancelled after the
certificate was issued or that the insured has not invalidated the policy in some
other way.

The risk of potential liability associated with an organiser undertaking to inspect
insurance certificates may therefore outweigh the negligible benefit that such
inspection offers.

If an organiser wishes to inspect participants’ insurance certificates then it should
check with its own insurers that it is covered for any claims which might be made
against the organiser should the organiser negligently fail to check that a
particular participant’s insurance is valid.

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