mrdct, on 2011-February-05, 16:29, said:
Jurisdiction is pretty important here as bidding box procedures are subject to local regulation. Assuming this happened in Australia, the relevant regulations in force at the moment are:
In Australia I have personal experience of TDs and appeals committee taking a pretty lenient view of what "unintentionally" means. Specifically, I was involved in a case where a player misdescribed his partner's bid and pulled 4♠ out of the box (which would've been the final contract in a 4-2 fit) and held it less than an inch from the table on a slight angle and visiable to all before realising his error and put it back and made an alternative bid that lead them to a making slam in a 6-4 fit. The TD ruled (and the appeals committee concurred giving me a 1VP appeal without merit fine) that he bid 4♠ unintentionally and could change it without penalty.
So in this case, in Australia at least, I think the guy who had the brain-snap and pulled the pass card out would have a pretty good chance of finding a TD or appeals committee willing to let him change his call to 4♥.
From your description I suspect that you "misdescribe" the Director's judgement:
If he has found that the player intended to bid 4
♥ but accidentally pulled the 4
♠ bid card from the box and didn't notice his mistake until he held this bid card in the position you describe, but once he discovered it he immediately and without pause for thought tried to change his bid to the desired 4
♥ then the Director's ruling was correct (and your appeal quite possibly was indeed without merit).