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:
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature’s laws are more immutable than any despot’s, yet to man’s daily life they rarely seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)