§ 94.003.Liability of Sponsoring Organization

The organisational protection, and its wording is unusually strict.

A sponsoring organization cannot be held liable for an act, error, or omission of a sports official absent any new, independent, and separate act, error, or omission of the sponsoring organization that gave rise to the harm.

Three adjectives, all required. The organisation's conduct must be new, independent, and separate from the official's.

That eliminates vicarious liability entirely. An organisation is not answerable for its officials' conduct as an employer would be for an employee's — it is answerable only for something it did itself.

Nor can a claimant reach the organisation by recharacterising the official's conduct as negligent selection or supervision, since a claim built on the official's act is not independent of it.

The reasoning follows from the previous section. If the official is not liable for an inherent-risk act, and organisations were vicariously liable for officials, the protection would achieve nothing — the claim would be brought against the league instead.

Between the two sections the chapter protects amateur sport at both levels: the volunteer with the whistle, and the club or association that put them there.

What remains available is a claim against the organisation for its own conduct — an unsafe venue, defective equipment it supplied, or a failure that has nothing to do with the officiating.