From: mittle@watson.ibm.com (Josh Mittleman)
Subject: Re: Requiring Membership to play
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 17:42:24 GMT
Organization: IBM T. J. Watson Research

Greetings from Arval!  Tibor wrote:

> However, when acting as an officer of the SCA,
> you are protected by the Director's and Officer's Liability
> policy.  The way it was written requires that you be a paid
> member to be covered.  I can see the reason for this, although
> On the one hand, we should be allowed to act without that protection,
> should we want to...

I had a very interesting & useful conversation with Liz Johnson, the
Chairman of the Board, a couple evenings ago.  I asked her about both these
points.  She pointed out that it isn't quite as simple as I thought.  If I
act as an officer of the SCA, Inc., and I were not a member, then my
liability would not be covered by the corporation's insurance.  Tibor asks,
quite rightly, why I shouldn't be able to assume that risk on my own?  The
answer is that it probably isn't just my risk: If someone were injured at
an event, and filed suit jointly against me and the corporation, then
according to Ms. Johnson our insurance company would refuse to get involved
because I was not a member.  The corporation would probably win any
resulting lawsuit, but only after several thousand dollars of legal fees.

I also asked whether we could separate liability protection from
membership.  That is to say, instead of defining the set of people covered
by our insurance as the paid membership, could we simpyl say outright that
all rostered officers & autocrats are automatically covered?  Ms. Johnson
did not know the answer to this question, but felt that it was a legitimate
suggestion. 


One other point from our conversation: The Board's primary motivation for
requiring membership for fighters has nothing to do with additional costs
created by fighters (although that apparently was the argument used by most
of the letterwriters who favored the membership requirement).  Their worry
is the waiver system: Fighters' waivers are our main legal defense if any
lawsuit should arise, and according to Ms. Johnson the current system for
collecting and storing waivers is not sufficient.  It is not enough that
they were signed; they have to be on file and available.  Since the
membership form contains the standard waiver (and since the waivers must be
standard across the Society), requiring membership to fight is the simplest
way to ensure that the waivers exist and are on file.  The Board also see
this as a way to reduce the workload of the volunteer list officers, and
shifting it to the corporate office where it would be substantially less
work since it is simply an extension of the existing system.  I suggested
that waivers for non-member fighters could be handled separately, perhaps
with a small fee to cover the cost of processing; Ms. Johnson expressed
concern about the extra workload for the already over-burdened corporate
office, and the possible use of membership funds to support non-member
activities.  I do not know how the Board is thinking about how the
liability question applies to fighter practices, which apparently would not
require membership.

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Arval Benicoeur                                       mittle@watson.ibm.com