Another trade associations confuses marketing and law: if you don’t understand the legal meaning of a word don’t use it like you do

ATTA article promotes goals for guides worldwide by calling them standards which in the US are the legally lowest possible acceptable level of acting.

The Adventure Travel Trade Association recently posted an article showing their research indicated that no standards existed for guides. Those standards were promoted by the association as needed to promote quality.

We view standards as critical to the future of the adventure travel industry’s success. As it is growing radically in participation numbers, it’s key that the operators expanding and joining the industry be of the best quality.

Their research is slightly flawed. Several states have laws regarding guiding, Colorado, West Virginia, Montana and California. Furthermore, the UIAA control and create guide standards in Europe, the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation. In Europe, these guide standards are the law in some countries.

The person who promoted the idea for the ATTA gave reasons for the need for standards.

“Why do we need a more universal standard?” asked Moore, “Because the adventure travel sector is growing, because tour operators around the world are demanding it, and because destinations need it to legitimately promote adventure activities”

The idea is to create standards in a proposed group in five areas. Those areas include medical care and technical knowledge.

Based on the article clearly the ATTA is attempting to create qualifications for being a good guide. The unanswered question is, is this being done for safety reasons or for marketing reasons?

No matter the reason, the attempt will create legal problems. Legally, standards are the proof of the poorest quality not the best. A legal standard is the lowest acceptable level of care. If you fall below the legal standard, you have breached a duty of care you may owe to someone. Three examples of this are:

New Jersey Model Jury Instructions state:

5.10A            NEGLIGENCE AND ORDINARY CARE – GENERAL

To summarize, every person is required to exercise the foresight, prudence and caution which a reasonably prudent person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances.  Negligence then is a departure from that standard of care.

The Restatement of Torts is a compendium of the law.

Restatement Second of Torts, section 282, defines negligence as “conduct which falls below the standard established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm.”

Colorado Jury Instructions, the law given to a jury when they go to the jury room to make their decisions about a case defines standard as:

CJI-Civ. 9:9 (CLE Ed. 2009)

Jury instructions define “standard of care” as “a duty to use that degree of care which a person of similar age, experience and intelligence would ordinarily use under the same or similar circumstances.”

If you fall below the standard of care and there is an injury you have breached a duty of care to a guest. You are on your way to helping the injured guest prove you are negligent.

Remember negligence is:

·         Duty

·         Breach of that Duty

·         Injury proximately caused by the Breach of Duty

·         Damages

In order to determine if there was a breach of a duty, the jury must determine the standard of care which the defendant fell below. If a trade association lists the requirements for the standard of care, puts them on the Internet or in a book, then the association has helped put its members in a courtroom. The plaintiff instead of struggling to establish the care was below the acceptable level need only to refer to the trade association as proof of the association member’s negligence.

Standards are Not Goals or Minimum Levels of Knowledge or Skill

It is obvious from the article that the association believes the standards will be goals to which its membership will strive for its guides to attain. You can probably post on your door or website that your guides meet the standards as established by your trade association. If that happens, then no matter how much the word safety is thrown out there for proof of the reasoning, the actual reasoning is a marketing program.

Either one will still sink a member.

In effect, you are handing the attorney for an injured guest the keys to open your bank account or insurance policy and take out money by creating or having an association create standards for your industry.

If you want actual examples of this look at the Climbing Wall Association or the Association of Experiential Education. The Climbing Wall Association changed their standards to best practices, and the AEE is about gone. Is the AEE having problems a result of their “standards?” I don’t know. I do know that both organizations were big in creating standards, and their members were sued a lot. See Payouts in Outdoor Recreation

If you don’t have the time or ability or your standards are beat to a pulp in a courtroom then you starting writing meaningless crap for standards. “You should have adequate guides for the number of guests in your group.” That statement has no value and thankfully brings nothing to the courtroom, so why kill a tree by creating it?

Besides can you create one set of standards that work worldwide let along across state lines?

A medical standard is the easiest to use as an example. A standard is created based on US or UK realities. Advanced professional first aid care (EMS) is available within roughly a four-hour window. Your guides are trained in first aid based on that four-hour window.

These standards are then applied to an area where there is no EMS. Transportation to a hospital may take days, and the hospital may not come close to the idea an American may visualize when they think of hospitals.

If a US guest is injured in that area of the world will the standard apply? Yes, you agreed to the standard or the association created the standard. If nothing else the jury will see the standard as what they should use to measure the care the injured guest received.

Are you going to argue to a jury that the standards not to apply because you took the US or EU client to a third-world country? Then the jury may look at you and determine either you should have done something to ensure the safety, which you did not, or you should not have gone there. Why, because you can’t meet the standard of care, your organization created.

Look at a simple cut. On a mountain in Nepal, you would immediately stop the bleeding and bandage the wound. In some jungles of South America or South-East Asia, you may want the wound to bleed a little to help clean the wound of any bacteria or other nasty’s that entered through the cut.

How do you write the standard for Kilimanjaro where the first two days are hiking through a jungle, and the next days are spent on the mountain?

The easiest example was the classic mistake of the AEE’s first set of standards. The standards stated you must pee 100 yards from any water. In the Southwest on river trips, this may get you fined by the federal agency managing the river you are rafting. There you pee in the river. What do you do if your standard violates state or federal law? What if your standard violates a religion?

Time and Upkeep

The biggest issue with standards is upkeep. It takes months, sometimes years to create standards, how do you keep them up to date? You have navigated your way through the difference requirements of different countries, trips and laws and then a law changes, a technique improves or better first aid care becomes available.

How do you go back and re-write the standard? When do you re-write the standard? How do you communicate the new standard? How do you convince your members to change to the new standard after they have spent time training their employees on the old standard and invested money in meeting it?

If you are using the old standard after a new standard comes out do you have a grace period? (No, this was a trick question.)

Just create great ideas. Educate members and guests on what to look for in a good guide. Provide education so guides can get better.

Don’t hang a noose around your member’s necks and call it marketing.

See ATTA Advances Conversation on Adventure Guide Qualification and Performance Standards

For more articles on this topic see:

If you mix up your language, you will be held to the wrong standard in court

Marketing is marketing and Risk Management is not marketing

Can a Standard Impeded Inventions?

If you mix up your language, you will be held to the wrong standard in court

If your organization says you do something and you are a member of the organization you better do it or be able to explain why you did not

Words: You cannot change a legal definition

For articles on Association Standards have been used to sue members see:

ACA Standards are used by Expert for the Plaintiff in a lawsuit against a Camp

Expert Witness Report: ACA “Standards” are used by Expert for the Plaintiff in a lawsuit against a Camp

Industry standards are proof of gross negligence and keep defendant in lawsuit even with good release

Plaintiff uses standards of ACCT to cost defendant $4.7 million

So if you write standards, you can, then use them to make money when someone sues your competitors

Trade Association Standards sink a Summer Camp when plaintiff uses them to prove Camp was negligent

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