Legal Liability 

When we talk about legal liability we mean to be held legally responsible for actions taken, or failure to take appropriate action.  This section of the site looks at the liability between ordinary and committee members, commercial associates and the public.

Legal Liability of members:

In general people are only responsible for their own acts, and those that they authorise, although employers may have vicarious liability for the wrongful acts of their employees, even if the employer did not specifically authorise it, and did not know about it, if the act was carried out in the course of the employee's employment.

However, ordinary members of an unincorporated association may only be held liable for the wrongful acts of other members of the association if:-

• they authorised or helped to carry out the activity;
• if they were in overall control of the activity;
• if they are specifically responsible for an activity, or the safety of premises, and they are found to be in breach of that duty.

The members of an unincorporated association do not have a general duty of care towards each other beyond that owed between strangers. Thus, in general, a member of an unincorporated association cannot claim against the other members unless it can be shown that an individual had a specific responsibility, for example for keeping the clubhouse in a safe condition, or that an individual knew of a danger and failed to warn the other members.

The constitution of a club may provide that the members are not liable for the organisation's debts or actions. This will not protect them if they are members of the committee, or have allowed their name to go on a contract, or have entered into an unauthorised contract, or are personally liable for criminal or negligent acts.

If a committee member (or ordinary member) is successfully sued, he is only entitled to be indemnified by the association if:-

• he was being sued as a representative of all the members, or
• he was carrying out activities for, and with the approval of, the association and its members.

The right to indemnity only extends to the assets of the association, and to any additional sum which the rules provide (typically one year's subscription from each member / see RYA Model Rule 46). Without such a rule, individual members have no right to be indemnified by other members of the association.

If you require further assistance please do not hesitate to contact the Legal Team Tel:  0844 5569519  Email: legal@rya.org.uk.