Volenti is no longer a full defence, only a partial defence. I did ask earlier for clarification and it wasn't given, so I checked.
I checked with an Injury Claims Lawyer, who is a partner in a large legal firm and also happens to be an endurance runner with a a fair amount of fell experience.
As well as my legal advise, I have checked with a qualified endurance official who operates as race director and scrutineer at many road races.
It appears that there have been several cases that set precedent eg Rugby. There is a clear risk of injury and particularly in the scrum so if you get injured volenti in the past would have been assumed. However now other factors come in to play. Competence of the referee in managing the scrum, possibly intent on behalf of another player...
So any Claim Lawyer involved in a incident where Volenti may have come in to play in the past, will now look for ways to circumvent Volenti and their first port of call is to look at the Rules, Safety Requirements, Guidelines, best practise as set out and then examine if it is possible to find breaches of those guidelines.
So anything that "must" be done or "should" be done in the FRA paperwork for ROs gives such a claims lawyer measures to check on immediately.
Any RO who hasn't done the "must" is clearly going against the NGB and so on thin ice and "shoulds" would have to have very good reason why the RO had chosen now to follow strongly recommended guidelines.
My legal friend has a degree of sympathy with the FRA's position. This is the way everything is going and as a fell runner himself he finds it quite saddening.
But he also thinks that the approach taken could be improved. Generally less written prescriptive direction, more instruction, introduction of a ROs qualification and some RO scrutiny.
This more or less is echoed by my Race official friend. His roll as a scrutineer is not to beat up ROs, but to ensure that ROs who have permitted, follow the basis of that permit and if they can do anything better that he can draw their attention to it for future events.
eg. One race he scrutinised said "traffic free start" but they just held up the traffic on one side of the road on a 800m stretch of main road with none of the side roads, or on coming traffic managed.
He advised them on how to better manage it going forward in terms of what they declare and what they do.
So it looks like there's a thumbs up for the FRA's plans to have ROs courses (with possible accreditation?) and a thumbs up to the plans to scrutinise races.
But there is a thumbs down for the way that the written guidelines are put together. One very clear comment was "who are these documents for" as the reader felt they switched from athlete to RO mid document, and that there was some duplication and it might be possible to demonstrate some contradiction.
