For Investors - Some possibilities to
reduce legal entanglements
1. Usually martial arts schools
have insurance that includes general liability and fire coverage. It
is typical to obtain specialized martial arts insurance for
approximately $1.00 per day. Ostensibly, this is a secondary policy if
injuries from sparring or tumbling are not otherwise covered. Tai Chi
Chuan has no (zero) tumbling or gymnastics. While a neurotypical
Chinese college student would almost certainly participate in sparring
tournaments this sort of activity is explicitly excluded from the
curriculum. As such, injuries in a Tai Chi Chuan class are very rare.
2. That said, the student population is likely to contain those
vulnerable to seizures, tachycardia and overheating. It is not
required to accept all candidates and it is to be expected that school
districts and social services agencies will send their most difficult
clients. While it is definitely
undesirable to exclude students with severe medical
challenges or with litigious parents, these risks are somewhat
tempered because it is already known that some accommodations and
trained aides must be in effect already.
3. By its very nature
an expressive language disability associated with dozens of syndromes
in the autism spectrum means that a student will often not be able to
communicate that he or she is in pain. We are pioneering the use
of temperature sensors to measure pain - how successful this will be
is unclear. The daily grades act in the
manner of res ipsa loquitur.
4. The
intent is to grade every student every day. Part of the reason for
sending bi-weekly or at most monthly recordings for external review is
to prevent poor teaching practices. A defensive resource actually lies
in the daily measurements - one may readily argue that if a student
was free of seizures for months and suddenly had an episode it is
almost certainly due to an external cause. For example, if there is
no indication in a student's documentation that he or she cannot
readily eat rice or congee (rice porridge) or that he or she reacts
negatively to our dit dah jow on their feet or forearms with some
diligence these limits should be explicitly discovered using daily
measurements.
5. It seems unlikely that a contract could
be contrived to forestall litigation but there would be utility in
protecting as many parties as possible from collateral damage.