Blog: Why Have Health and Fitness Standards If Courts Won't Recognize Them?

In 1992, the American College of Sports Medicine published the first edition of ACSM's Health/Fitness Facilities Standards and Guidelines. In many ways, it was an ambitious undertaking and one that some industry observers felt was too much, too soon. One major criticism arose over the possibility that the book would serve as a ready source of written requirements to be applied as a standard of care to evaluate conduct in particular legal cases where negligence was alleged. Therefore, the second edition (published in 1997) noted that the book "represent[ed] a nationally derived consensus statement concerning the standards" set forth in the book's first chapter, and guidelines that "should not be deemed to be all-inclusive in their treatment of various areas of concern, nor should they be considered to be exclusive of other methods or modalities of service rendition."

The second edition's notice, that "the ultimate responsibility for development and application of services and procedures lies with the facility providing services," was further redrafted in a third edition (published in 2007) by a "Notice and Disclaimer" that indicated the publication should not be used to set a legal standard of care. The disclaimer read in part:

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