ESPN Meets CourtTV?Sports Injury and Assumption of the Risk

This week, the appellate courts of California have had a field day of sorts, producing three new decisions on the right to recover -- or more frequently the absence of a right to recover -- for sporting and athletic injuries.  Each of these cases applies some variant on the doctrine of "primary assumption of the risk," under which a participant in sporting activity is deemed to have assumed the risk of physical injury that is "inherent" in that activity, and cannot recover damages from sponsors, coaches, or other participants unless those defendants can be shown to have significantly increased those risks beyond their natural level. 

In the most notable of this week's sports decisions, the California Supreme Court considered the claims of a college baseball player in Avila v. Citrus Community College District (Case No. S119575, April 6, 2006).  The opening paragraph sets the scene in simple terms:

During an intercollegiate baseball game at a community college, one of the home team’s batters is hit by a pitch.  In the next half-inning, the home team’s pitcher allegedly retaliates with an inside pitch and hits a visiting batter in the head.  The visiting batter is injured, he sues, and the courts must umpire the dispute.

The claim that reached the Supreme Court was only against the Community College District on whose campus the game was being played.  After disposing of the issue of whether the District can claim governmental immunity in these circumstances (it cannot), the Court turns to the question of whether the District actually owed any legal duty to visiting players to prevent this injury and, in particular, whether the District owed a duty to "supervise and control" the pitcher.  Citing the primary assumption of the risk doctrine -- and the colorful history of Our National Pastime -- the Court finds no duty:

* * * Being hit by a pitch is an inherent risk of baseball. (Balthazor v. Little League Baseball, Inc. (1998) 62 Cal.App.4th 47, 51-52; see also Mann v. Nutrilite, Inc. (1955) 136 Cal.App.2d 729, 734 [same re being hit by thrown ball].)  The dangers of being hit by a pitch, often thrown at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour, are apparent and well known: being hit can result in serious injury or, on rare tragic occasions, death.

Being intentionally hit is likewise an inherent risk of the sport, so accepted by custom that a pitch intentionally thrown at a batter has its own terminology: 'brushback,' 'beanball,' 'chin music.'  In turn, those pitchers notorious for throwing at hitters are 'headhunters.'  Pitchers intentionally throw at batters to disrupt a batter’s timing or back him away from home plate, to retaliate after a teammate has been hit, or to punish a batter for having hit a home run.  (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game (2000) pp. 205-239.)  Some of the most respected baseball managers and pitchers have openly discussed the fundamental place throwing at batters has in their sport.  In George Will’s study of the game, Men at Work, onetime Oakland Athletics and current St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa details the strategic importance of ordering selective intentional throwing at opposing batters, principally to retaliate for one’s own players being hit.  (Will, Men at Work (1990) pp. 61-64.)  As Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale and New York Giants All Star pitcher Sal “The Barber” Maglie have explained, intentionally throwing at batters can also be an integral part of pitching tactics, a tool to help get batters out by upsetting their frame of mind.  Drysdale and Maglie are not alone; past and future Hall of Famers, from Early Wynn and Bob Gibson to Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, have relied on the actual or threatened willingness to throw at batters to aid their pitching.  (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game, at pp. 223-224; Yankees Aced by Red Sox, L.A. Times (May 31, 2001) p. D7 [relating Martinez’s assertion that he would even throw at Babe Ruth].)

[Italics in original; footnotes containing additional baseball lore omitted.]

Only Justice Kennard dissents from the majority's "startling conclusion" endorsing the beanball, although she allows that the district would still not be potentially liable absent a showing that it was actively encouraging the beanball's use.  The full decision [PDF] is available here.

In other sporting news, the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that the operator of the Squaw Valley ski area is not liable for the injuries sustained by a child skier who collided with "a plainly visible, aluminum snowmaking hydrant" alongside the ski run:

[T]his court has listed the risks inherent in snow skiing on more than one occasion. '"'"Each person who participates in the sport of [snow] skiing accepts the dangers that inhere in that sport insofar as the dangers are obvious and necessary. Those dangers include, but are not limited to, injuries which can result from variations in terrain; surface or subsurface snow or ice conditions; bare spots; rocks, trees and other forms of natural growth or debris; collisions with ski lift towers and their components, with other skiers, or with properly marked or plainly visible snow[]making or snow[]grooming equipment...."'"'

[Italics in original.]  Souza v. Squaw Valley Ski Corp. (Case No. C049329, April 5, 2006), full decision [PDF] available here.

And if you were not already concerned about the dangers of pursuing good health and physical culture, there is the Fourth District's opinion in Rostal v. Neste Enterprises (Case No. E037544, April 5, 2006), nicely summarized by Professor Martin at California Appellate Report as holding:

[P]rimary assumption of the risk doctrine bars personal injury claims brought against a personal trainer for injuries incurred when his patron works out too hard and has a heart attack. 

So play safe, kids.  Game on!

[Super beanball illustration via The Comic Treadmill.] 

Comments

[Mag]

Well, I have to ask: how did you find us (us being Mag and H from the Comic Treadmill)?

[George Wallace]

It's only polite to answer: I just searched for beanball in Google Images, and there it was.