With all the talk of now allowing digital evidence, we have received a lot of questions about the timing of appeals. We briefly cover appeals in the RO and CRO seminars, but don’t focus a ton on Chapter 11. Frankly, most folks ignore it until they want to file an arbitration or the Range Master starts reviewing it when someone requests an arbitration form to make sure all the steps are followed. Let’s talk more about the complete appeal process from the initial disagreement to arbitration.
Let’s talk about 11.1.3 first: Appeals–the Range officer makes decisions initially. If the appellant disagrees with a decision, the Chief Range Officer for the stage or area in question should be asked to rule. If a disagreement still exists, the Range Master must be asked to rule. Digital evidence, e.g., video, audio, photographic or other can be presented and reviewed.
When you don’t agree with a scoring call on a target, or request a hole be overlayed, you are starting the process outlined in 11.1.3. Same goes when you disagree with the number of foot fault penalties that were applied or penalties for not engaging targets. First, you appeal to the RO who made the call. The RO should overlay the hole or explain why they applied X number of penalties. If you don’t agree, you can ask the CRO for the stage to look at the target or consider the number of penalties. If you still disagree, you can call the RM and appeal to him/her. In this process, digital evidence is allowed. The RO, CRO, and RM can all look at it on your device right then and there on the stage. Basically, if you disagree with anything, do not hit the approve button on the scorepad until the RM has been there. If you hit approve and then review your video and it shows you didn’t foot fault, you can still show the RO/CRO and if they agree the score can be edited via mutual consent (see 9.7.4) after the scoresheet has been approved.
Just remember that scoring calls by the RM are final. Penalties can be arbitrated and that you need to go through this entire appeal process (RO–>CRO–>RM) in order to arbitrate. If you decide to arbitrate, you need to request an arbitration form from the RM. If you have digital evidence you want to use in the appeal, you will need to transfer that file to the RM when you request the arbitration form. You need to complete the arbitration form within one hour of the event in question (see 11.3.1) and in addition to a properly filled out form, you will also need the match fee or $100 in cash, whichever is less. All this goes to the RM who then hands it off to the match director. Remember to cite the rule number(s) supporting your appeal and what outcome you would like in addition to describing the incident on your arbitration form. If you want to know the rest of the process, please see Chapter 11 of the Competition rulebook.
Basically we see very few arbitrations. I believe it’s because we have trained our range officials, at all levels, to help identify problems before the match starts which means we have time to fix things and prevent potential arbitrations. Also, with digital evidence now being allowed, most disputes will likely be resolved with the early part of the appeal process whole still at the stage.
We have already had reports from the RMs of a few major matches about the number of video appeals. And the number is low for each match. This is consistent with the information we got from IPSC officials where videos have been allowed for many years. NROI will collect more data as the year progresses, but we don’t expect this to slow down matches significantly.