The Los Angeles Dodgers may be lighting it up on the diamond this summer.
But the franchise lost a big one a month ago when a Southern California jury found it negligent in the beating death of a San Francisco Giants fan in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.
The jury deemed the Dodgers negligent and required the team to pay plaintiff Brian Stow close to $14 million for medical bills, lost wages and to a lesser degree pain and suffering.
Plaintiff’s attorney Tom Girardi successfully argued that the team failed to provide adequate security at the stadium, and that the two assailants — Dodger fans Louie Sanchez and Marvin Norwood — should have been ejected long before the game was over.
One sports law attorney, who watched the proceedings, told Sports Litigation Alert that the plaintiff’s attorney “described a failure to eject the assailants while they were in the stadium as the Dodger’s first act of negligence (the behavior complained of, by the way, consisted of yelling obscenities, ‘harassing people’, throwing peanuts-at end of game one assailant poured soda or got more aggressive but not physical. Would this triggered an ejection in our Stadium? Not sure). This behavior purportedly started in the 2nd inning until the end of the game.”
Dana Fox, the lawyer for the Dodgers, reportedly argued that Stow was contributorilly negligent for the beating, since his blood-alcohol level was .18 percent.
Girardi told the jurors: “Dodger Stadium got to a place where it was a total mess. There was a culture of violence. Beer sales were off the charts.”
Clearly, Girardi had sympathy on his side, with Stow being brought into the court in his wheelchair and being “positioned front and center where jurors could see the ghastly scars on his head where his skull was temporarily removed during medical efforts to save his life,” according to the Associated Press.
Our aforementioned observer also noted:
“Another prevalent theme was ‘the Dodgers’ own pocketbook prevented them from doing this. They slacked on spending a reasonable amount of money on security. He calculated they spent 64 cents a person on security, yet charged ten bucks a person for beer or for parking.
“Also argued that they cut corners with having police in polo shirts because it was less expensive than a uniformed presence. The plaintiff argued that you need ‘the man in blue’ to keep order.
“He gave a good analogy that when you are speeding and you pass a cop in a marked cop car, you react by checking the speedometer and you slow down if you are going too fast. He argued that the presence of the men in blue would have had unruly fans like the assailants check their behavior or think twice about their behavior. ‘You need that sort of authority,’ he said. But the Dodgers did not do it because it would have increased the budget.”
