watson v british boxing board of control 2001 case

Herbert Smith, London. In my judgment there is a clear distinction between the role of the Board and the role of a fire service or the police service. [6] This was an extension to the previous duty of care under negligence, and also serves as an exception to the rule under trespass to the person that a defendant will not be liable for personal harm caused in sporting matches which the claimant consents to. (Vowles v Evans and the Welsh Rugby Union Ltd [2003] EWCA Civ 318), governing bodies for failing to provide in their rules for appropriate medical provision at ringside in a boxing match (Watson v British Boxing Board of Control [2001] QB 1134), . . Lord Bridge went on to state that these ingredients were insufficiently precise to be used as practical tests and to commend the desirability of proceeding by analogy with established categories of negligence. So the tortious damage may be seen as consecutive to, and aggravating, that which was inevitable. On the facts of the present case the Claimant suffered only a minor primary injury. For Liability in Negligence to Arise - LawTeacher.net 48. The referee stopped the fight in the final round when Watson appeared to be unable to defend himself. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control [2001] QB 1734 - Law Journals Case: Watson v British Boxing Board of Control [2001] QB 1734 Case Report: Andrew Risk v Rose Bruford College [2013] EWHC 3869 (QB) 12 King's Bench Walk (Chambers of Paul Russell QC) | Personal Injury Law Journal | March 2014 #123 It is sometimes said that there has to be an assumption of responsibility by the person concerned. For example, the relationship between the parties may be such that it is obvious that a lack of care will create a risk of harm and that as a matter of common sense and justice a duty should be imposed.. Again in most cases of the direct infliction of physical loss or injury through carelessness, it is self-evident that a civilised system of law should hold that a duty of care has been broken, whereas the infliction of financial harm may well pose a more difficult problem. 74. After recovering consciousness, he sued the BBBC in negligence, and was awarded approximately 1 million by the High Court of Justice, who determined that the relationship between the BBBC and Watson was sufficient to create a duty of care. Where there is a potential for physical injury, I do not believe that I have to go beyond the traditional concept of neighbourhood to find a duty where there is, as here, a clearly foreseeable danger. Therefore in giving that advice he owes a duty to the child to exercise the skill and care of a reasonable advisory teacher.". 82. Asser International Sports Law Blog | Guest Blog - Mixed Martial Arts He sued the owner, Mr Usherwood and the Popular Flying Association ("the PFA"). In my view the Claimant makes his case on causation when he shows, as he has done, that with the protocol in place he would have been attended from the outset by a doctor skilled in resuscitation, who would have made any necessary inquiries of the neurosurgeons at St. Bartholomews, who would themselves have been on notice. 3. Mr Morris, commenting in his Witness Statement on the Statement of Claim, stated: "We do collaborate with the medical profession, indeed we believe that our Rules are as good as currently can be devised, taking into account the medical interests of the boxers, and the requirements of the sport itself. He claimed that the Board had been under a duty of care to see that all reasonable steps were taken to ensure that he received immediate and effective medical attention and treatment should he sustain injury in the fight. LAWS204 - Torts - Negligent Ommissions Flashcards | Quizlet There are a number of problems with this submission. [5] Phillips noted that the BBBC had taken control of medically supervising the sport, and that the duty of care was not just to avoid injuries, but "to ensure that injuries already sustained are properly treated". 5. If such head teacher gives advice to the parents, then in my judgment he must exercise the skills and care of a reasonable teacher in giving such advice. The provision made by those rules in relation to medical assistance was plain. 84. 42. He would only use it to overcome breathing difficulties. BBC SPORT | OTHER SPORTS | Boxing board loses appeal B. In these circumstances the task is to look at the circumstances in which specific factors have given rise to the duty of care and to consider whether, on the facts of this case, they should also give rise to such a duty. d) The rule that a boxer must be medically examined before every contest. The Politics of traditional-federal state formationand land In these circumstances, it is no cause for surprise that the equipment was not in fact used. At the outset, however, I propose to identify some significant features of the present case, which place it outside any established category of duty of care in negligence. Once resuscitation, or stabilisation has taken place, the next stage is neuro-surgery to remove the haematoma and seal any ruptured veins or arteries. If so, it is misguided. Had the Board's rules required Mr Hamlyn's protocol to be put in place, the doctors present could have been expected to have resorted to resuscitation. By the time he received resuscitation in hospital he had sustained permanent brain damage which such treatment would have prevented. The members of the Board are those who are involved in professional boxing. He did not, however, identify any obvious stepping stones to his decision. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control - Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 Michael Watson was injured in a boxing match supervised by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC or BBBC), which was expected to provide medical care. The duty will be owed to the victim of a road accident who is received by the hospital unconscious. [1988] 1 AC 1074 at 1090; and Hotson v East Berkshire Area Health Authority [1987] 1 AC 750 at 783. Michael Watson MBE, born 15 March 1965, is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1984-1991. 131. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control: Negligent Rule-Making in the Court of Appeal. A number of authorities show that an acceptance of the role (usually under statutory powers or duties) of protecting the community in general from foreseeable dangers does not carry with it a legal duty of care to safeguard individual members of the community from those dangers. Mr Watson's case can be summarised as follows: i) The Board assumed responsibility for the control of an activity the essence of which was that personal injuries should be sustained by those participating. The doctors should decide between them who will remain ringside and who will undertake the emergency treatment should the need arise. 92. The Judge held that it was the duty of the Board, and of those advising it on medical matters, to be prospective in their thinking and to seek competent advice as to how a recognised danger could best be combated. This contention had some similarities to submissions made in relation to the Popular Flying Association in. He would thus have developed the subdural haemorrhage in the most favourable circumstances possible, short of doing so in hospital with staff around him. The Judge referred (Transcript p.17) to the question of whether to attach a duty of care to the facts of the present case would be an acceptable incremental extension of established liabilities, or too long a step. Clearly, they look to the Board's stipulations as providing the appropriate standard. Nor do I see why the fact that the Board is a non profit-making organisation should provide it with an immunity from liability in negligence. Had the ambulance been, in fact, just as satisfactory, this would have meant that the absence of a Rule requiring such a facility would have had no causative effect. Saville L.J. The brain benefits from the increased supply of oxygen and from a reduction in intra-cranial pressure in so far as this was attributable to excessive carbon dioxide. The local hospital was close to the boxing ring and therefore the transfer occurred very quickly and during this period of time, as far as I can ascertain, his condition was satisfactory and the insertion of an endotrachael tube was not absolutely necessary. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control - Wikipedia Obviously a full report should then be sent to the relevant Area Council or Board and the sooner this is done, from a medical view point, the better.". I shall have to examine the facts and reasoning in Perrett in due course, for Mr Mackay, QC, for Mr Watson has relied upon it as providing a close analogy with the present case. Thus the criteria identified by Hobhouse L.J. Lord Phillips MR Gazette 22-Mar-2001, Times 02-Feb-2001, [2000] EWCA Civ 2116, [2001] QB 1134, [2001] PIQR 16 Bailii, Bailii England and Wales Citing: Considered Perrett v Collins, Underwood PFA (Ulair) Limited (T/a Popular Flying Association) CA 22-May-1998 The plaintiff was a passenger in an aircraft which crashed, and there was a preliminary issue as to the liability to him of those who certified that the aircraft was fit to fly. He emphasised that the Board does not provide medical treatment or employ doctors. It is not possible to measure even on the balance of probabilities where the damage would have stopped if the protocol had been followed. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control - WikiMili.com A . Mr Hamlyn said, and I accept, that there would have been very few British neurosurgeons who at this time would have questioned the need to put up a line and administer this diuretic in a case such as the present. Some boxers employed their own doctors. The claim was based upon the alleged negligent failure of the defendant to enforce disciplinary regulations against drunkenness so as to protect the deceased against his own known proclivity for alcohol . The conduct of the activity of professional boxing carries with it, for the small body of men that take part in it, the need for the provision of medical assistance to treat the injuries that they sustain and minimise their adverse consequences. In 1991 its income was some 314,000 of which some 51,000 represented licence and application fees and about 224,000 `tournament tax', which I understand to represent a small percentage of the takings at boxing tournaments. 88. I find this distinction between instructions as to duties and instructions as to how to perform duties elusive and over subtle. The issue is whether the standard of reasonable care required the Board to change their practice in order to address the risks of such injuries before the Watson/Eubank fight. The peculiar features of the duty of care alleged are as follows: i) the duty alleged is not to take reasonable care to avoid causing personal injury. A boxer member of the Board would not be aware of the details of all these matters. The Board accepted these recommendations and promulgated them by way of guidance. Thus, it has members who pay membership fees or subscriptions in return for which it provides them with facilities. This reasoning was followed by the House of Lords in Phelps v Hillingdon Borough Council [2000] 3 WLR 776. Once the defendant had become involved in the activity which gives rise to the risk, he comes under the duty to act reasonably in all respects relevant to that risk. They also argued that it was not fair, just and reasonable that the PFA should be liable to negligence. The doctors required by the rules to be present at a contest had to be doctors who had been approved by the Board. The contest was sponsored not by the Board, but by the World Boxing Organisation (WBO). 75. Order: Appal dismissed with costs on the issues of liability and causation here and below, those costs to be assessed forthwith on to Legal Services Assessment; 18,000 in Court to be paid out in part satisfaction of those costs forthwith; detailed assessment on standard basis; Legal Services Commission taxation; application for permission to appeal to House of Lords refused. e) The rule that any boxer selected to take part in a championship contest shall submit to the Board a satisfactory centralised tomography (CT) brain scan report not less than 28 days before the contest and a further scan report annually, so long as the boxer continues to take part in such contests. He makes a diagnosis and advises the education authority. Throughout, the child was very dependent upon the expert's assessment. This concludes my consideration of cases dealing with the assumption of responsibility to exercise reasonable care to safeguard a victim from the consequences of an existing personal injury or illness. In contrast the injuries which are sustained by professional boxers are the foreseeable, indeed inevitable, consequence of an activity which the Board sponsors, encourages and controls. that the negligence alleged fell into the category of directly causing foreseeable personal injury, both he and Swinton Thomas L.J. It can also result in disturbance of the processes of breathing so that insufficient air is taken into the lungs to ensure adequate oxidation of the blood. It trades under the name of the "Popular Flying Association" and it appears that either its main role or one of its main roles is to run that association. Once brought into contact with the plaintiffs, the professionals owed a duty properly to exercise their professional skills in dealing with their `patients', the plaintiffs. 2. can also be found in Watson v British Boxing Board of Control [2001] QB 1134 in which Lord Phillips MR's advice on dealing with analogous cases was to first identify the principles relied upon as giving rise to a duty of care in the present case. While Buxton L.J. Thus at p.1162 Lord Woolf observed: "Once a call to an ambulance service has been accepted, the service is dealing with a named individual upon whom the duty becomes focused. It is to make regulations imposing on others the duty to achieve these results. In particular, the Board controlled the medical assistance that would be provided. The child's parents will seldom be in a position to know whether the psychologist's advice was sound or not. So far as the promoter was concerned, these delimited his obligations. The company, as the Popular Flying Association, appoint inspectors for the purpose of, among other things, inspecting aircraft during the course of their construction by members of the association and certifying whether the relevant work has been done to his "entire satisfaction" and the aircraft is in an airworthy condition. This may entail suturing of a wound, the assessment of the seriousness of any injury or maybe just simple advice concerning future training or contests. Had the Board said nothing, it might not be liable, but once it gave advice by setting rules, it came to be responsible. In such a case the authority running the hospital is under a duty to those whom it admits to exercise reasonable care in the way it runs it: see Gold v Essex County Council [1942] 2 K.B. Without it, the system of personal injury compensation would not have survived. Serious brain damage such as that suffered by Mr Watson, though happily an uncommon consequence of a boxing injury, represented the most serious risk posed by the sport and one that required to be addressed. It seems to me that the authorities support a principle that, where A places himself in a relationship to B in which Bs physical safety becomes dependant upon the acts and omissions of A, As conduct can suffice to impose on A a duty to exercise reasonable care for Bs safety. and Had the board simply given advice to all involved in professional boxing as to appropriate medical precautions, it would be strongly arguable that there was insufficient proximity between the board and individual boxers to give rise to a duty of care. The onlookers derive entertainment, but none of the physical and moral benefits which have been seen as the fruits of engagement in many sports.". Flashcards. Found Watson & British Boxing Board Of Control Ltd & Anor useful? 51. If Mr Watson has no remedy against the Board, he has no remedy at all. Mr Watson suffered such an injury when he was knocked down in the eleventh round. It would only have added three minutes or so if he had waited until he was summoned. The Court of Appeal drew a correct analogy with the doctor instructed by an insurance company to examine an applicant for the life insurance. The Board's assumption of responsibility in relation to medical care probably relieved the promoter of such responsibility. Boxing could not, however, have survived as a legal sport without strict regulation, one aim of which is to limit the injuries inflicted in the ring. 30. These facts produced a relationship of close proximity between the Board and those of its members who were professional boxers. Of course.these three matters overlap with each other and are really facets of the same thing. Test. It is not so much that responsibility is assumed as that it is recognised or imposed by the law.". In any event I believe that this point vanishes when causation is considered. "The postulate of a simple duty to avoid any harm that is, with hindsight, reasonably capable of being foreseen becomes untenable without the imposition of some intelligible limits to keep the law of negligence within the bounds of common sense and practicality. Watson v British Boxing Board of Control The Importance of Evidence in Proving a Breach of Duty Rugby Rugby is a dangerous sport with heavy body collisions between players and regularly, multiple players at any given time. As I read the judgment the duty of care turned upon the acceptance by the ambulance service of the request to provide an ambulance and thus the acceptance of responsibility for the care of the particular patient. Any loss of consciousness was short lived - he regained his feet and walked to his corner. 1, 43-44, where he said: "It is preferable, in my view, that the law should develop novel categories of negligence incrementally and by analogy with established categories, rather than by a massive extension of a prima facie duty of care restrained only by indefinable `considerations which ought to negative, or to reduce or limit the scope of the duty or the class of person to whom it is owed.". The Board argued that this demonstrated that the standard applied by the Judge was too high. Center circle: In the center circle, jot down the name of your stated goalin this case, Create an Audio Educational Program. Similarly none of the particular difficulties which arise in relation to economic loss arise in relation to the causing of personal injury. Lord Mustill reached the same conclusion in R v Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 at p.265, where he gave the following description of professional boxing: "For money, not recreation or personal improvement, each boxer tries to hurt the opponent more than he is hurt himself, and aims to end the contest prematurely by inflicting a brain injury serious enough to make the opponent unconscious, or temporarily by impairing his central nervous system through a blow to the midriff, or cutting his skin to a degree which would ordinarily be well within the scope of Section 20. I do not believe there is any difference in principle between giving advice about safety and laying down rules to provide for safety. If PFA was not liable in negligence, the Plaintiff might be left without a remedy against anyone. However, should this not be so, then the boxer's gumshield should be removed, an adequate airway established and the boxer put on his left side so that should he fit or vomit he will not obstruct his airway. In my judgment, the same duty applies to any other person possessed of special skills, such as a social worker. had not been responsible for the claimant's asthma but it had caused the respiratory arrest and to this extent the L.A.S was the author of additional damage.". [2001] QB 1134 was a case of the Court of Appeal of England Negligence duty of care - Marc Rich & Co v Bishop Rock Marine Co (Rule 5.9(c)). He was held at North Middlesex Hospital until 23.55 to ensure that he was stabilised for the onward journey, and then taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. There was also an ambulance standing by which had resuscitation equipment and a paramedic who knew how to use this. In Smoldon v Whitworth [1997] PIQR P133 the duty of care had been conceded in the context of a school colts game and similarly, boxing came under scrutiny in Watson v British Boxing. I now come to the second special feature of this case - the fact that the Board is not charged with having failed itself to provide appropriate medical treatment, but with having failed to impose rules and regulations which would have ensured that others did so. A preliminary issue was tried as to whether Mr Usherwood and the PFA owed the Plaintiff a duty of care. Get 1 point on providing a valid sentiment to this Regulating unsanctioned violence in Australian sport: time for Vamplew 49. But the fact that the carrying out of the retainer involves contact with and relationship with the child cannot alter the extent of the duty owed by the professionals under the retainer from the local authority. Moreover, the tendering of any advice will in many cases involve interviewing and, in the case of doctors, examining the child. There was evidence that the Board's Medical Committee met regularly to consider medical precautions. In these circumstances the claim against Mr Usherwood was a conventional claim for carelessness causing direct and foreseeable personal injury. Lord Steyn stated:-, "Since the decision in Dorset Yacht Co. v The Home Office [1970] AC 1004, it has been settled law that the elements of foreseeability and proximity as well as considerations of fairness, justice and reasonableness are relevant to all cases whatever the nature of the harm sustained by the plaintiff..". Each doctor is expected to attend a tournament fully equipped to cover all emergencies. Held: A certifying . a) Requirements as to protective covering for the ring floor and the corners (Rule 3.4). Negligence and Duty of Care in Sport - JNP Legal None of the three doctors present went to his assistance until requested to do so. In the final round, Watson lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, arriving there nearly half an hour after the end of the fight and received resuscitation treatment. The referee stopped the fight in the final round when Watson appeared to be unable to defend himself. 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Each emphatically concluded that it was. The following rules fall into this category: 3.8 The promoter shall procure that two doctors, who must be approved by the Area Medical Officer, attend at all promotions, one of whom must be seated at the ringside at all times during the contest. In the leading judgment Hobhouse L.J. Lord Phillips in the Court of Appeal described the case as a unique one because here, rather than . Where a patient is brought unconscious to hospital as a result of intra-cranial bleeding, the practice is first to apply a process described as resuscitation or stabilisation. If his condition was satisfactory, he could have been transferred for resuscitation to hospital, there have his condition stabilised and thereafter be transferred to a Neurosurgical Unit for more definitive investigation and treatment. In that case a doctor phoned for an ambulance to take to hospital urgently a patient who had suffered an asthma attack. In the course of his work he assesses a pupil whose lack of progress at school has been causing concern all round: to teachers and parents alike. Afternoon in a Yellow Room, by Charles Edwar, CHRONICLES - The Unz