Lake Michigan SuRF Newsletter - LMSRF

well as experienced adult sailors with many miles under their keels. These two procedural impediments are the
two most common causes when a decision takes months to reach.
Once the comment period closes, I assign the appeal to one of the committee members. This judge will have
primary responsibility to analyze the appeal, factor in the comments we receive, review the US Sailing appeals and
ISAF cases and write a report. The report is sent to the other members for review, comments and input. Each
judge does their own analysis of the appeal and then uses their own work to criticize, discuss and analyze the
written report of the assigned judge.
The report and the other member’s responses are exchanged via email with the entire committee at
which point deliberations begin. While many decisions are clear and straightforward at other times
factors, such as arguably ambiguous facts found by the Protest Committee, make the process more
contentious. Eventually each judge’s position is clear and solidifies and if a consensus was not
reached, I call for a vote. The committee’s decision is then written up and distributed to the parties
and to the US Sailing appeals office. Our work is then normally finished.
It is common to vacate a decision and return it to the Protest Committee for additional facts or to re-open the
hearing. We do not find facts – that is strictly the province of the Protest Committee - we can only decide if the
Protest Committee applied the Racing Rules of Sailing to the facts they have found correctly. Many of the appeals
we get are actually efforts to add facts or change them. This we do not have the power to do. If upon remand a
party is unhappy with the outcome of the re-hearing, they can appeal again. This, too, does not happen often.
More common, though still rare, our decisions are occasionally appealed to US Sailing’s Appeals Committee. Since I
began serving on the appeals committee (over 15 years) every decision we have made that reached it has been
sustained by US Sailing’s Appeals Committee. That should be some indication of the quality of judges I am honored
to serve with and who serve you, the racing sailors. We have also had the distinction of being praised by US Sailing
as one of the appeals committees in the US with the fastest disposition rates, superior analysis and comprehensive
decisions.
Prior to the internet, we used meet twice a year to deliberate and decide the cases.
Frankly this caused delays, especially when we learned that key information was
missing and we would have to send a letter requesting it. Deliberations would begin
anew months later, once our request had been complied with. With the advent of
email we meet as appeals arrive, doing our work the new fangled way - digitally.
In a case where the appellant’s initial filing is complete and comprehensive, we could
decide an appeal in as short as a month after having received it, factoring in the
Racing Rules of Sailing 15 day comment period. The longest is determined solely by
the responsiveness and preparation of the appellant, parties and the Protest
Committee. We have had cases that have taken more than a year to decide where
one Protest Committee was not responsive and took many months to supply the
information we needed to make a decision. Fortunately that is the exceptional case
and not the rule.
The members of the appeals committee all have a wealth of experience. We are US
Sailing certified judges, senior judges and international judges. We have been
hearing protests for many years and some of us have been members of the LMSRF
Appeals Committee for a long time, too. Many of us are also active racing sailors
who spend weekends on the water and even find ourselves on the wrong side of the
table at protests once in a while. Having an experienced and stable committee is
essential to just outcomes. Committee members come from multiple yacht clubs in
Lake Michigan Sail Racing Federation 6 November 2012 Newsletter