Coulda, shoulda..........perhaps. AMA's legal beagles invoked and relied upon an 'assumption of risk' defense, arguing that injured party as a participant was aware of the potential risk of what happened to him but decided to participate anyway, so it was his own fault he was injured. It has worked before and since in injury cases involving recreational activities with good odds of prevailing in the civil courts, but it didn't in that case. Another shoulda in retrospect is AMA may not have been involved in the lawsuit in the first place if they had not balked at paying the injured party's claim against the operator of the model. Lots of possible alternate outcomes can be imagined, only one actually happened.

Perspectives in hindsight about how AMA might have successfully prevailed in that case are tangential to the point brought up by Frank, IMHO. I took it as a caution to rule makers that their rules might come back to bite them on their butts, and I happen to think he is right. Make the rules, bear the responsibility. I'm generally amenable to those terms, and so don't push rules on others........