Strict liability - CAS confirm what it means

keef_zip

"The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Gibbs could not prove a friend had spiked his drink with the banned stimulant in February 2010."

"To permit an athlete to establish how a substance came to be present in his body by little more than a denial that he took it would undermine the objectives of the code and rules," wrote Beloff.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_s ... 411787.stm

Two year ban. Next stop for Bertie, me thinks

Gingerflash

It seems they're suggesting that it's morte a reversal of the burden of proof rather than strict liability

It's rather like the principle of "res ipsa loqitur"; the facts speak for themselves, leaving a defendant liable unless he can prove an innocent cause of the positive test.

That's quite a way from short of what we lawyers would call strict liability.

keef_zip

Gingerflash wrote:

It seems they're suggesting that it's morte a reversal of the burden of proof rather than strict liability

It's rather like the principle of "res ipsa loqitur"; the facts speak for themselves, leaving a defendant liable unless he can prove an innocent cause of the positive test.

That's quite a way from short of what we lawyers would call strict liability.

I take your point, but it's not really. The strict liability is still there. Positive test = ban. The prove how it got there relates to the length of the ban.

Gingerflash

Ah yes, I hadn't realised that he was only appealing against the sanction, not the conviction.