Sports Club Liability for a Player's Injury: What the Law Requires of the Association

A player entrusts his body to the club. He trains according to the program set by the professional staff, plays on the field the club provided, wears the equipment supplied to him and is examined by the doctor the association chose. When an injury occurs, it is natural for attention to turn first of all to the sport itself: competitive sport involves risk, and that is part of the game. But this assumption, however correct it may be, is not the end of the discussion, only its beginning.

Between the club and its players there is a rich legal relationship: a duty of care in tort, statutory duties under the Sports Law, 1988, and quite often also an employer-employee relationship with all that follows from it. Each of these layers gives rise to rights for an injured player, and to duties the club may not shake off by claiming that “this is sport”.

In this article we review the club's duties toward its players: what the duty of care is and how it is assessed, what the Sports Law provides regarding insurance and medical examinations, what is required in terms of facilities and equipment, what the medical staff's responsibility is when returning a player from injury, and what happens when the club did not insure its players at all.

The club's duty of care toward its players

A sports club is not a bystander: it is the body that organizes the activity, sets its conditions and benefits from it. By virtue of this status it owes a duty of care to its players, under which it must take reasonable measures so that the risk to which the player is exposed does not exceed the risk inherent in the sport itself. A football player accepts the possibility of a painful legal tackle; he does not accept a field full of holes, an extreme training program unsuited to his condition, or facing an opponent while injured.

Case law therefore distinguishes between the risk inherent in the activity, for which no liability will arise, and excess risk created by the club's negligence. The assessment is always concrete: what the club knew or should have known, what precautions were customary in that sport and at that level of play, and whether their cost is reasonable relative to the danger. The more professional the club and the greater its resources, the higher the standard of conduct the courts will expect of it.

The insurance duty under the Sports Law

The Sports Law, 1988 establishes an insurance arrangement unique to the field: sports associations, unions, federations and competition organizers must, as a general rule and subject to the exceptions in the Law, insure the athletes active within them under personal accident insurance. The emphasis is important and worth repeating: the duty, insofar as it applies, rests on the organizing bodies and not on the athlete. A player is not supposed to buy a policy for himself as a condition for taking the field, and the association cannot shift this burden onto him.

The policy must cover sporting activity within the association, in games and at training, in amounts and on terms no less than those set in the regulations under the Law. This is personal accident insurance, which pays benefits according to the disability rate and the period of incapacity without any need to prove fault. Note that the insurance duty under section 7 of the Law does not apply to every athlete, and among others the following were excluded from it: athletes who receive at least the minimum wage in return for participating in competitions; participants in sports activity on behalf of the workplace who are insured as work injury victims; students covered by personal accident insurance for students with respect to the covered activity; and athletes participating in activity for which there is no pay or other consideration. It is important to know that exemption from the insurance duty does not prevent the association from taking out voluntary insurance, and does not rule out a tort claim where the injury was caused by negligence. Insofar as the duty applies, the organizing body must check that coverage exists when the athlete joins and at the start of each season. Alongside the insurance duty, the Law also sets a duty of periodic medical examinations for athletes as a condition for participating in competitions, with the aim of identifying in advance medical limitations that competitive effort may aggravate. An association that lets a player take part in activity without having undergone the required examinations exposes him to risk and exposes itself to liability.

Facilities, fields and equipment

A considerable share of sports injuries stems not from the game but from the environment in which it takes place. A club is responsible for ensuring that the facilities under its control are fit for the activity conducted in them, including:

• Sound playing surfaces: maintained grass, parquet that is not slippery or broken, free of holes and hazards

• Goals, baskets and equipment anchored as required, that are not liable to tip over onto a player

• Adequate lighting at evening training and safety distances from walls and pillars

• Sound personal and team equipment: shin guards, helmets, landing mats that are not worn out

• Suitable environmental conditions: drinking and rest breaks under heat stress, and avoiding training in dangerous conditions

A real-life scenario: a young tennis player injured her ankle after stepping on a protruding drain cover at the edge of a municipal tennis court that the association used for training. The association argued that the hazard was the municipality's responsibility alone, but whoever chose to hold training at a facility with a visible hazard cannot wash their hands of it. In such cases liability may be divided between the facility operator and the club that used it.

Medical staff and return from injury

The club's medical and professional staff has a dual role: to treat the injured player and, no less important, to decide when he may return. The return-to-play decision is a juncture at which the sporting interest of the club, which needs the player on the field, may clash with the player's medical welfare. The law is clear: the judgment must be medical, and returning a player to activity before he has recovered, while ignoring findings or without proper inquiry, may give rise to liability for the club and the treating parties if the injury was aggravated.

Particular sensitivity applies to head injuries. A concussion requires immediate cessation of activity and observation, and a graded return only after recovery, according to the accepted protocols in the sport. If a player was returned to the game on the same evening he took a blow to the head and was injured again, the club will find it very hard to explain this after the fact. Poor fitness management can also amount to negligence: imposing an unusual training load on a player who has just returned from injury, contrary to the instructions of the treating party, is an excess risk the club created with its own hands.

A salaried player: an injury that is also a work accident

When the player receives a salary from the club, an employer-employee relationship exists between them. An injury in a game, at training or in activity on behalf of the team may be recognized as a work accident by Bituach Leumi (the National Insurance Institute), with all the accompanying rights: injury allowance at a rate of 75% of salary for the period of incapacity up to the ceiling set by law, coverage of medical treatment, and determination of work disability by a medical committee. Permanent disability at a rate of 9% to less than 20% entitles the injured person to a one-time grant, and 20% or more entitles him to a pension. A player who cannot return to his sport may request an increase under Regulation 15, up to half of the disability degree, taking into account occupation and age.

It is important to understand how the proceedings relate to one another: recognition by Bituach Leumi does not depend on the club's fault, whereas a tort claim against the club as employer requires proof of negligence, and National Insurance Institute benefits are generally deducted from the compensation in it. If the claim was rejected by the Institute, the way to challenge the rejection is to file a claim with the Regional Labour Court. Decisions of a medical appeals committee may be appealed to the Regional Labour Court on a question of law only.

What happens when the club did not insure

Here we reach one of the painful questions in the field: a player is injured, turns to claim under the insurance, and discovers that the association took out no policy at all, or took out a policy with amounts lower than required. Where an insurance duty applies to the association and it did not insure, or insured for less than required, it is exposed to a claim by the player in the tort of breach of statutory duty under section 63 of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance. In such a claim the elements of the tort must be proven, including the damage and causation: what the required insurance would have covered and paid had it been taken out.

The dispute in such a claim is not over fault for the injury itself, but over what the insurance would have paid, since insurance under the Sports Law is intended precisely for cases where there is no fault. Players themselves are advised not to wait for the day of reckoning: ask the association, at the very start of the season, for confirmation that the insurance exists and for the main terms of the policy, and keep them. This is a legitimate request backed by the law.

How a claim against a club is built

Anyone who was injured and is considering proceedings against the club should act on two levels in parallel. On the medical level: document the injury from the moment it occurred, keep treatment summaries, imaging tests and incapacity certificates, and maintain continuity of care. On the evidentiary level: collect the accounts of witnesses who were present at the incident, photograph the place and equipment where relevant, keep correspondence with the professional staff, and locate the insurance policy and the employment contract if one exists. At the next stage, the question of forum and route is examined: claiming under the policy, proceedings with the National Insurance Institute, a tort claim, or a combination of these in the right order. Each route has its own time limits, including a limitation period of 3 years in claims against an insurer, so there should be no delay.

Summary

The relationship between a player and a club is not limited to the rules of the game: it is saturated with legal duties meant to protect the one who actually bears the physical risk. The duty of care requires the club to manage fields, equipment, training and medical decisions responsibly; the Sports Law requires it, as a general rule and subject to exceptions, to insure its players and to ensure medical examinations are carried out; and the employment relationship adds, for the salaried player, the system of rights of work injury victims. An injured player faces a web of routes, each measured by different rules and deadlines, and choosing correctly among them is a professional decision.

The sports department of Yaniv Gavish Law Office accompanies players and their families in dealings with clubs, insurers and the National Insurance Institute, and will be glad to review your case as well. For a consultation: 4 Berkowitz St., Tel Aviv, telephone 076-5385862.