MakeItHappen

It's been done and the results were not good. I'm going from memory here so specific details might be incorrect. Around the early or mid 1990's there was a guy that took a passenger on a tandem. I do not remember the details of the 'problem' but the passenger died from the landing. The TM suffered injuries too, but recovered. This happen at a small central CA DZ (Arvin?- IIRC). The family of the deceased sued EVERYONE! eg: the TM, the tandem rig owner, the pilot, the DZ, USPA, the tandem Mfg (Strong) etc The TM was NOT rated by Strong - even though he used a Strong tandem rig. I believe he did have a RWS tandem rating (or did have one at one time). This was when the FAA wavier was still in effect. There was no USPA tandem rating. USPA also had TMMI (aka student insurance) at the time. Months & months go by with all parties spending TONS of money to 'get out' of the case. USPA's insurance company 'paid off' even at the request of the organization NOT to do this. This made it even harder for Strong to show that they were not responsible for this accident. [An innocent paying off looks like admitting guilt.] Strong went to court hearing after hearing trying to convince the court that this guy was NOT Strong rated nor the owner of the rig and therefore Strong was NOT liable. In the end, after lots of money was spent (~several hundred thousands of dollars) Strong was found something like '10%' liable. They had to pay more money. IIRC, the reason for this '10%' liability was something to the effect: 'You have the wavier that says you monitor your TM/owners in the field. You did not do this adequately, otherwise the tandem rig owner would have never let an un-rated person use the rig.' . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker

Grant, personally asked me to reply to this thread: Pandora's Box of Proxies I will no longer present history, pros/cons for the specific proxies or debate the merits on these, as it is a moot point now. Besides, all of that info has already been posted by me in several places. The key to the proxies is the future - not the past. Our future will be that a handful of people will collect proxies, valid for whatever time period needed, until they (as a group) have a quorum. This could be one person collecting 3500 proxies or a number of people collecting 3500 among them. Once this group of people realize they have a quorum (collectively), they will ask for such-n-such motion be put on the GMM Agenda. At the GMM, the people with the proxies can cast their proxy votes however they see fit. They will be able to make changes. The power to change things will be in the hands of the (few) people with the proxies. That is our future because not enough individual members did not state how they wanted the specfic issues to go. Members were demanding specific proxies after the first one. That's what USPA gave you and you blew it off. You may whine & cry all about this or that about this year's SPECIFIC proxy, but the future hand will be played out as I describe. . . Make It Happen Parachute History DiveMaker