In a ruling that grabbed national headlines, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that a man who lost an eye after being hit by a baseball during a minor league contest can proceed with a lawsuit against the host team and the owners of the stadium.
On August 13, 2008, Bud Rountree was attending a home game of the Boise Hawks at Memorial Stadium in Garden City, Idaho. Rountree had been a season-ticket holder for 20 years. Joining him at the game was his wife and two grandchildren.
During the game, Rountree and his family left their seats to go to the “Executive Club” for a few refreshments, which is protected from foul balls from above by horizontal mesh netting. However, it also happens to be one of the few areas of the park not protected from the field of play by vertical netting. Rountree was engaged in a conversation at the club when he heard the roar of the crowd and turned his head back to the game. Just then, he was struck by a foul ball,which ultimately cost him his eye.
Two years later, Rountree sued the defendants, collectively known as Boise Baseball, for negligence in state court.
The defendants’ principle argument was that they were shielded by the “Baseball Rule,” a loosely adopted rule, which suggests that a team or stadium shouldn’t be held liable since a fan assumes the risk when they enter the stadium. Besides a fair amount of national case law that supports the rule, they also cited the exculpatory language on the back of the ticket — “The holder assumes all risk and dangers incidental to the game of baseball including specifically (but not exclusively) the danger of being injured by thrown or batted balls.”
After a state court judge used his discretionary power not to invoke the rule, Boise Baseball appealed, arguing for the imposition of the “Baseball Rule” and that the plaintiff assumed the risk. It also maintained that not imposing the rule could spawn lawsuits by amateur and professional athletes “voluntarily playing sports like baseball, softball, basketball . . . despite the fact that there are inherent risks to these sports.”
But the high court would have none of it.
The court wrote that “contributory negligence is not to be a complete bar to recovery; instead, liability is to be apportioned between the parties based on the degree of fault for which each is responsible.” Further, allowing “assumption of risk as an absolute bar is inconsistent with our comparative negligence system, whether the risks are inherent in an activity, or not.”
And juries are best positioned to make a call in a “comparative negligence system.”
“Whether a party participated in something inherently dangerous will simply inform the comparison, rather than wholly preclude it,” the court held. “Here, whether watching baseball is inherently dangerous, and the degrees of fault to be apportioned to Rountree and Boise Baseball, are questions for the jury,”
The court added that it was up to the state legislature to decide whether the “Baseball Rule” should be adopted.
“Declining to adopt the Baseball Rule leaves policy formulation to the deliberative body that is better positioned to consider the pros and cons of the issue,” it held.
View the opinion: http://www.isc.idaho.gov/opinions/rountree38966.pdf
Rountree was represented by attorney W. Breck Seiniger of Boise, while Boise Baseball was represented by Joshua Evett.
