Watson v British Boxing Board of Control Ltd

A private sporting regulator may owe participants a duty to use reasonable care when it controls the safety arrangements for an inherently dangerous activity. The duty may extend to rules governing treatment of injuries already sustained.

Proximity may arise where the regulator controls the relevant activity and medical precautions, possesses specialist expertise, addresses a defined and vulnerable class, and knows that participants reasonably rely on its arrangements. The ordinary standard of reasonable skill and care applies. A regulator must obtain competent advice and consider prospectively how recognised risks should be addressed. Liability follows where reasonable precautions would probably have produced a materially better medical outcome.

During a professional boxing contest conducted under the appellant Board's rules, the claimant sustained a brain haemorrhage. He did not receive immediate ringside resuscitation and suffered permanent brain damage. He alleged that the Board should have required suitable equipment, trained personnel, immediate examination and direct transfer to a neurosurgical unit.

Ian Kennedy J gave judgment for the claimant. The Board appealed against the findings that it owed and breached a duty of care and that the breach caused the claimant's injury. The central questions were whether the Board's control of professional boxing and its medical arrangements created sufficient proximity, whether reasonable care required a ringside resuscitation protocol, and whether that protocol would probably have improved the outcome.

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. Lord Phillips MR delivered the judgment, with which May and Laws LJJ agreed. The Board owed the claimant a duty to take reasonable care when determining the medical facilities and assistance required at professional boxing contests.

2. The duty arose from the Board's distinctive position. It sponsored, encouraged and completely controlled an activity involving inevitable physical injury. It prescribed mandatory medical arrangements for a small and defined class of boxer members, possessed or could obtain specialist expertise, and held itself out as treating their safety as paramount. Boxers could reasonably rely upon it to exercise care. The duty was fair, just and reasonable notwithstanding that this represented a novel application of negligence principles.

3. The Board did more than offer general safety advice. Its mandatory rules effectively determined what medical protection promoters supplied and probably displaced the responsibility that promoters would otherwise bear. This created close proximity between the Board and each boxer competing under its rules. The decision did not establish a general immunity or liability for all sporting regulators; other sports would require consideration of their own facts.

4. The applicable standard was ordinary reasonable skill and care, not the public-law standard of irrationality. The Board had to think prospectively, obtain competent advice and address the recognised risk of serious head injury. Reasonable care required a system providing ringside resuscitation equipment, personnel trained to intubate and ventilate, and arrangements for prompt transfer to a neurosurgical unit. The practices of other boxing authorities did not determine whether the Board's arrangements were reasonable.

5. The trial judge was entitled to find causation. Under the required protocol, resuscitation would probably have begun at least 20 and perhaps 30 minutes earlier. Although the precise improvement could not be measured, earlier treatment would probably have produced a significantly better outcome. On the causation principles relied upon by the judge, that finding entitled the claimant to recover fully.

1. Court of Appeal: The Board's appeal was dismissed unanimously. The findings on duty, breach and causation were upheld. Permission to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.

2. High Court, Queen's Bench Division: Ian Kennedy J gave judgment for the claimant on 24 September 1999, holding that the Board owed and breached a duty of care and that the breach caused compensable injury.