Law 59 Inability to lead or play as required
Law 59 reads:
'A player may play any otherwise legal card if he is unable to lead or play as required to comply with a rectification, whether because he holds no card of the required suit........'
A defender on lead is asked by declarer to lead the suit in which his partner has a penalty card. The defender on lead does not have a card of that suit and is free to lead what he likes.
Is the knowledge that he is void in that suit authorised for his partner or is it unauthorised? Would it come under law 16C2, information arising from a withdrawn action?
Comments
I don't think that there is a withdrawn action by the player who is unable to lead or play as required.
I think Law 16A1(c) applies. It is information arising from the legal procedures authorised in the Laws, and is therefor authorised information to both sides.
This seems to make sense if one compares it with the fact that the following is authorised information to the side that has a penalty card:
(a) that it must be played at the first legal opportunity; and
(b) the details of the lead penalties if partner obtains the lead while the penalty card is still exposed.
You can have penalty cards with no action involved, e.g. if an honour falls out of your hand during the bidding and your partner sees it.
It would be strange if the authorisation of the information in question depended on how the penalty card was created. Thus, even if the penalty card turns out to be the consequence of a withdrawn action, I'd say that someone refusing to follow a lead restriction is authorised information that they had no suitable cards with which to do so. (This isn't much different from a player showing out when they were obligated to follow suit to a lead.)
Not sure why you say "no action" - partner has to pass when next his turn to call and if the side becomes defenders then it is a major penalty card (assuming it was your fault the card was exposed). So the lead options may still apply.
(If the card is exposed before the auction begins then Law 16D applies, not Law 24 - this was one of the changes in the 2017 laws - and one reference I have added to my lawbook since it is not obvious.).
I, too, think that a player is allowed to know that their partner couldn;t obey the requirement to play a card of the specified denomination - after all, failure to do so when such a card is held is a revoke 16A
I meant "no withdrawn action", in the sense that there isn't anything being "undone" here. There's a major penalty card, but it wasn't the consequence of a withdrawn action, so the rules relating to withdrawn actions can't automatically apply to major penalty cards.