Spectators

[pran]

I don't see how Law 76A authorizes the Director to bar a spectator who refuses to speak up for whatever reason. His reasons may be personal and are in no way the Director's business.

Law 76A says that spectators in the playing area are subject to control of the director, under the regulations for the tournament. So if there are no regulations regarding spectators, their presence is solely at the discretion of the TD.

He may bar all spectators, but not just some spectators except for cause. And refusal to speak up is no "cause".

 

Law 76C1 says that "A spectator may speak as to fact or law within the playing area* only when requested to do so by the Director", but it does in no way say that a spectator must speak (when requested by the Director). (My emphasizing)

 

I never said that the law requires a spectator to answer the TD's questions. In fact, I said just the opposite. But the wording of 76C1 actually prohibits a spectator from speaking as to fact or law unless the TD asks him to do so. That, though, has nothing to do with the question at hand.

 

Regarding witnesses, I said nothing about "in a criminal court". The scenario I envisioned was regarding a police officer investigating a crime or an accident.

In our civilized world nobody has any duty to testify to a police officer, witness duty exists only in court. And both your examples represent criminal, not civil cases.

 

Of course, as in bridge, what the laws actually say about that scenario depends on where you are.

 

I think we've beat this horse to death. Let's find a different one to beat.

Agreed

 

regards Sven

[barmar]

In our civilized world nobody has any duty to testify to a police officer, witness duty exists only in court. And both your examples represent criminal, not civil cases.

Refusing to answer questions from a police officer may be obstruction of justice, unless you're asserting your right against self-incrimination.

 

But as has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there's no analogous Law in bridge.

[bluejak]

In practice it means that a kibitzer who refuses to cooperate in the TD's investigation gets invited to leave. I'm not Cal Lightman, but quite often I'll have a pretty good idea when someone lies to me. So it is not the case that your latter statement will necessarily be accepted at face value, at least not by me. OTOH, it's not necessarily the case that the second statement will be a lie — and assuming that it is goes against my sensibilities.

Following this logic, spectators would then be _required_ to give full attention to what happens at the table. There is no law or regulation AFAIK to support this. The TD IMO should not be accusing a spectator of refusing to answer the TD's question when there is no way of knowing whether he did that: he could have honestly not paid attention or he could have paid attention but dishonestly said he did not pay attention. I was not assuming that "not paid attention" was a lie, it could have been either the truth or a lie and the TD has no way of knowing which it was, without access to the spectator's head...

 

Anyway, I stand by my conviction that it should be allowed for a spectator to not get involved and to be honest about it, with no consequences to that spectator. If you find a law or regulation or CoC to support your opinion, I would be interested in seeing it.

If you ask a player a question, you judge how honest the answer is and how far you can rely on it. This is no different. It is easy enough to have a regulation for kibitzers.

 

As for coercion, why not? If you watch a tennis match, and are told no flash photography or you get thrown out, that's coercion. It is also fair enough.

 

While, of course, everything happens, I personally think the number of bloody-minded kibitzers is far outweighed anyway by the number of reasonable ones who would answer a question without all this fuss.

 

:)

 

You are going to kick a vugraph operator out of the room because they won't tell the director whether or not there was a discernable hesitation?  This has to be one of the most ridiculous posts I've ever seen - and from a moderator of this forum no less! 

 

Remind me not to do vugraph operating for any event that you are directing.

 

You should probably be reported to the Vugraph Operators Union so a formal ban on vugraph can be place on your events.

I think that people who do a job with a bloody-minded unhelpful frame of mind are never much good anyway. Maybe they do have a union telling them to act like total jerks but I doubt it.

 

:ph34r:

 

He may bar all spectators, but not just some spectators except for cause. And refusal to speak up is no "cause".

Certainly it is "cause". When someone makes a reasonable request, not to do so is cause. If a TD asks four kibitzers to move to a different part of the room, three do, one says he will not, he can throw him out.

 

You cannot force people to act reasonably, but you can certainly kick them out for behaving unreasonably.