State Laws
State law may dramatically limit the effect of the Act.
In 1990, as a further experiment in cooperative federalism, President Bush released a Model State Volunteer Act and called for state-by-state adoption. In response to these forces, state legislatures began taking action. Every state now has a law addressing the legal liability of volunteers.
However, the state statutes lack uniformity and consistency. State legislatures were forced to confront numerous political pressures and lobbies, and to balance volunteer liability protection against victim compensation.
Only about half the states protect any volunteers other than directors and officers of the nonprofit organization. Moreover, every state volunteer protection statute has exceptions, as does the VPA itself; and the exceptions are not necessarily uniform. The most common exceptions to volunteer immunity are for certain types of "bad" volunteer conduct, the use by volunteers of motor vehicles, and federal actions.
Most state laws do not immunize volunteers against claims based on a volunteer's willful or wanton misconduct. And many states also exclude claims of harm based on gross negligence from the scope of the volunteer immunity.
A few state laws appear to permit lawsuits against a volunteer based on the volunteer's simple negligence, with the apparent result of nullifying any real protection under the VPA; these laws are very questionable in the face of VPA, which sets out a uniform federal rule.
Read more about this topic: Volunteer Protection Act
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or laws:
“From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles. There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but not much like that,—immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, the eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)