Scrutineering Hmm, Hypotheticly how does a scrutineer get on if he passes a bike as being fit to race at the start of a race day , then later in the day a wheel collapses on a scrutineered bike causing injury or worse . An Investigation proves that the wheel should never have passed scrutineering in the first place. Is the scrutineer legally liable
Tim's covered the guts of this, but I'll add some padding:
If you are trained/qualified and you follow written procedures, then you'll be OK.
You risk a shit-storm if you are unqualified, or you 'make it up'.
MA (or your boss, or whoever is supposed to be in charge) will have to answer the other questions about whether your qualifications were actually suitable, etc.
So in Bill's example, if the scrutineer passes something that is clearly not safe, and it turns to pooh, then the scrutineer
could be personally liable. I say "could" because there's still a lot of issues surrounding responsibility, whether the problem was/should have been found by the scrutineer, why it actually failed, etc.
In a lot of ways, the scrute avoids a lot of the responsibility for passing something that's not right, simply by bringing it to the rider's attention.
CAMS scrutineers sign off log-books with "NAFF" - No Apparent Fault Found... The used to write "OK", and then "No Fault Found" - I'm sure you can all imagine the (possible) legal arguments that brought us to writing NAFF instead...
Interestingly, CAMS are now moving to "Targetted scrutiny" - circuit cars only get checked once every 4 race meetings, plus the occasional random check. The responsibility to present a safe and legal race car, is back on the competitor.
The chance of legal action (justified or not) is far greater if someone dies - and that's basically just because competitors know and accept the risks and so they're are less likely to try to sue somebody. A grieving family, on the other hand, is often a relatively soft target for an ambulance chasing lawyer...
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.