HELP! Can I get a National Tour Permit in 9 Days?

[MarkS 11]

806.52 miles according to mapquest.com. I made a couple critical novice errors in preparing the form but gee-wiz... not that one. ;-)

[Oak Tree 15]

John-in-KC,

 

What do you think is going to happen as a result of not filing a national tour permit? I'm trying to imagine the scenario. You say that the BSA and local council will pay out the nose. For what? I mean, if someone gets injured and the adults are liable, the BSA will pay regardless of whether or not a tour permit was filed. How will it cost BSA more?

 

Sincerely curious,

Oak Tree

[John-in-KC 311]

Oak Tree,

 

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. I have, however, retained lawyers in litigation. I've also spent close to 30 years in our Nations uniform, and sat a fair number of administrative law boards and conducted more than a few lost/damaged property investigations.

 

In my circumstance, I see a situation where the plaintiff's attorneys will open a line of attack against BSA, the Council, the CP, and the Scouters: The attorneys will say a contributing cause was the units' failure to use even the slightest amount of care in a way that shows recklessness or willful disregard for the safety of others.

 

The legal/insurance/accounting industry and military definition of gross negligence is: Negligence beyond the ordinary; a reckless or wanton disregard of the duty of care toward others.

 

In the situation I described in my post, we are talking about not planning the trip. It'll be hard to defend against that. Who here doesn't do a map recon of the route for a trip to new territory? Who here doesn't check?

 

I guess my key points are:

- It's ours, the Scouters, jobs, to get the youth to their program, and to plan it right!

- Most of the time, even if we get it wrong, nothing is going to happen.

- When something does happen, though, we've opened our armor with not just chinks, but huge gaping holes.

 

Moral of the story: Train Scouters to plan to support their youth.

[Beavah 205]

Yah, John, dat seems like a pretty long and convoluted chain of causation, eh? I think even the most obnoxious of plaintiff's attorneys would have a hard time makin' a gross negligence claim out of a failure to file ancillary paperwork. Not a proximate cause even for a claim of simple negligence, eh?

 

I think there should be a black-letter policy in G2SS and in every BSA train-the-trainer course. Nobody should ever use words like "liability" or other legal falderal when addressin' an average citizen scouter. Especially them as aren't trained in da law.

 

 

[GernBlansten 10]

I'm not a lawyer, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn once.

Negligence would only be an out if the paperwork neglected would have adverted the incident. In the case where every requirement of the tour permit was met (licensed drivers, correct # of seat belts, insurance limits, etc), but the paperwork not submitted and approved by BSA, the lack of the paperwork would be irrelevant in any litigation since it would not have any bearing on the outcome of the incident.

 

I'm not suggesting that scouters not do the paperwork, but I find tour permits to be just that, paperwork. It does make me go through the hoops. Without the tour permit, I probably wouldn't request the info from every driver, but I see no value added beyond that. Especially since my council rubber stamps every tour permit submitted.

[FScouter 24]

The purpose of a tour permit is so the council can reduce risk by spotting potentially unsafe outing plans and suggest changes that will reduce risk. "WHAT? You mean we need TWO adults on our campout??"

"WHAT? You mean the drivers must have car insurance?"

"WHAT? You mean we can't play war games with live ammo?"

"WHAT? You mean we can't load the boys in the back of the pickup truck??"

[GernBlansten 10]

FScouter, I disagree.

The purpose of the tour permit process is to make us go through the thought process to verify all our activities are within BSA guidelines. The tour permit itself cannot guarantee that, nor can BSA. It does not protect us, or keep us safe from litigation. It does not guarantee that those who fill it out and submit it will follow BSA rules. Its up to us trench soldiers to follow the guidelines. I will submit that without the permit process, many of our fellow scouters would simply not comply with BSA guidelines, but because of it, they do. In that small way, it is a valuable tool.

[Beavah 205]

The purpose of a tour permit is so the council can reduce risk by spotting potentially unsafe outing plans and suggest changes that will reduce risk.

 

 

LOL, this had me rollin' in the aisles.

 

I ain't never seen a council or a regional office use the tour permit to "spot potentially unsafe outing plans". Dat's a hoot. These things are handled by very nice ladies in air-conditioned offices who may not ever have been campin' in their lives. They wouldn't recognize an unsafe outing plan if it left a cowpie on their desk.

 

Tour permits are scanned to make sure all da lines are filled in and the boxes checked. That's it. They're "paperwork safety" and a legal fig leaf. Mostly, they do what Gern suggests - make Scouters at least nominally think about a few important steps.

 

Beavah

 

[John-in-KC 311]

Beavah,

 

That's why we have to train unit serving Scouters to plan safely.

 

A couple of years ago my Troop went to Packerd for a HA week. It's a bit over 800 miles. The SM didn't understand why the convoy couldn't drive it with one driver/vehicle in one driving day.

 

He and his wife "do 1400 mile driving days all the time."

 

Sad but true.

[FScouter 24]

If the tour permit is as worthless as you say it is, are you also suggesting that units not bother filing them?

 

I wonder what would happen if I told the woman at the council office we quit filing tour permits because she was as stoopid as a cow pie?

[scottteng 11]

OK I'll be the pot stirrer again. When was the last time anyone filed a "unit money-earning application" http://www.scouting.org/forms/34427.pdf

[Oak Tree 15]

I had to laugh at Beavah's description of the typical council office. It certainly rings true for our council. There's a group of nice ladies in an air-conditioned office. Now, I do know that at least one of them has done some camping, but some of the rest don't really seem like the camping type. The tour permit doesn't really have that much info on there for them to recognize an unsafe plan, anyway.

 

At any rate, we've never had a plan questioned. In fact, we are all strongly suspicious that no one even performs a cursory check on the permits. I don't think we've ever had even one question asked. So there's not a lot of incentive from the council to file these forms. But we do it anyway, mostly just to remind ourselves to review the rules.

 

Oak Tree

 

P.S. FScouter, I don't think Beavah compared the ladies to cow pies. That looks like your creation.

[Lisabob 13]

Scott - every time we do a fundraiser.

 

Is it a hassle, sure, sometimes. But you know what, I have also seen that filing the required paperwork (both for tour permits and fundraisers) gives people pause to think about what they are doing, why, and whether it meets the requirements and guidelines.

 

Paperwork, in and of itself, probably is not going to make an outing safer or a fundraiser more successful (or palatable). But if the process forces people to stop and think for just a moment then that's not a bad thing.

 

 

[MarkS 11]

Our service center says it came today and we can pick it up tomorrow.

[Lisabob 13]

Wahoo! Just in time, too. Glad to hear it worked out for you Mark.