By Elizabeth Bulat
An Oregon state court of appeals has reversed a lower court, which will allow a college basketball player who suffered an injury while participating in a workout at the University of Oregon to continue to pursue his negligence claim against the school.
The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibits workouts during an official visit to protect the recruit from not only pressure associated with the “tryout,” but also to prevent injury in a high-level environment. Crisshawn Clark (Plaintiff) was a basketball player for Cãnada College, a junior college in Redwood City, CA when he was invited to an official recruiting visit by the University of Oregon. While on the visit, the Plaintiff learned about the basketball program, saw the facilities, and met the coaches and team. Plaintiff also completed a basketball drill, at the request of University of Oregon staff, that resulted in a knee injury. Following the visit, Plaintiff filed a negligence claim against the University of Oregon as well as five members of the basketball team’s staff: Dana Altman, Josh Jamieson, Kevin McKenna, Mike Meggenga, and Tony Stubblefield (Defendants).
The initial trial took place at Lane County Circuit Court on July 20, 2020. The trial judge dismissed the action on three grounds: that the “Plaintiff allegedly unreasonably created a foreseeable risk of harm to him that went beyond ordinary participation in a sports activity, and it was squarely within the province of the jury to assess the reasonableness of defendants’ conduct and the foreseeability of the risk of harm to Plaintiff; the trial court abused its discretion in denying Plaintiff’s motion to amend the complaint,” and Plaintiff’s “motion for summary judgment on Defendants’ defense of ‘comparative fault/contributory negligence.’” Plaintiff appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals of Oregon, where this court subsequently determined the trial court erred in dismissing Plaintiff’s claim, reversing and remanding on all accounts.
According to court filings, while visiting the University of Oregon, Plaintiff was brought to dinner by Defendant Meggenga who asked about Plaintiff’s surgical history, discovering that he had recently had his knees “scoped.” Nonetheless, the next day, Meggenga led Plaintiff through a basketball workout, supervised by other members of the basketball program’s staff, where Defendant Meggenga and Plaintiff made contact that resulted in Plaintiff’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tearing. This ‘activity’ also violated NCAA Bylaw 13.6.7.10, which explicitly states that, “during an official visit, a prospective student-athlete may not attend events in which professional tryout or workout activities occur.”
Plaintiff claimed that Defendants failed, “to take reasonable steps to avoid injuring himself; endangered him needlessly; mandated he hit/foul during a basketball drill in a way that was not reasonable under the circumstances; organized a basketball workout at a time that was not reasonable under the circumstances; failed to perform a medical evaluation or otherwise medically clear him before he worked out; behaved in a manner that was unreasonable based upon the circumstances; violated NCAA Bylaw 13.11 et seq, which Defendants knew or should have known about, in at least two ways: allowing and/or requiring Plaintiff to workout/ tryout/display his athletic abilities on his official visit while he had remaining eligibility to play basketball at [the junior college]; and allowing Plaintiff to workout/tryout/display his athletic abilities on his official visit before obtaining the required medical clearance.”
The trial court dismissed Plaintiff’s claim by stating that the contact between Plaintiff and Defendant Meggenga fell under, “a normal, inevitable and inherent risk of playing basketball, and as a matter of law, injury resulting from such contact is not actionable.”
The court relied on a long-debated issue in sport – the balancing act of negligence and assumed risk in sport. For example, in Blair v. Mt. Hood Meadows Development Corp. 291 Or. 703, 634 P.2d 241 (1981) the Oregon Supreme Court established that “The fact that a sports participant’s injury results from a risk which is an element of a sport even when properly conducted may continue to defeat recovery for negligence because Defendant’s duty in the context of the sport may not extend to protecting against such risks.” Years later, the Oregon Supreme Court reapproached negligence liability in Fazzolari v. Portland School Dist. No. 1J, 303 Ore. 1, 4, 734 P2d 1326 (1987) by stating, “In short, unless the parties invoke a status, a relationship, or a particular standard of conduct that creates, defines, or limits Defendant’s duty, the issue of liability for harm actually resulting from Defendant’s conduct properly depends on whether that conduct unreasonably created a foreseeable risk to a protected interest of the kind of harm that befell Plaintiff.”
Upon balancing a variety of precedents, the Court of Appeals of Oregon deemed Plaintiff’s circumstances to be, “different than ordinary participation in a sports activity,” since the “Defendants did those acts despite their knowledge of Plaintiff’s previous knee surgery and despite the fact that most of the acts, including the act of allowing or requiring Plaintiff to participate in any workout with coaches at all, violated NCAA rules.” Therefore, Plaintiff’s negligence claim is justified since “the conduct by Defendants that Plaintiff alleges unreasonably created a foreseeable risk of harm to him goes beyond ordinary participation in a sports activity. It is squarely within the province of the jury to assess the reasonableness of Defendants’ conduct and the foreseeability of the risk of harm to Plaintiff. Thus, the trial court erred in granting summary judgment for Defendants.”
Furthermore, this court determined the trial court also erred in denying Plaintiff the ability to amend his complaint – to include a negligent supervision claim – when the alteration didn’t, “relate back to the filing of the original complaint. Thus, the proposed amendment was not futile.” Therefore, the Court of Appeals of Oregon concluded that the trial court “abused its discretion in denying Plaintiff’s motion to amend the complaint.”
Finally, Plaintiff, “contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion for summary judgment on Defendants’ defense of ‘comparative fault/contributory negligence.’” The Court of Appeals of Oregon once again decided in favor of Plaintiff by concluding that, since there was no evidence to support the defense in the record, “the trial court erred in denying Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment in that respect.” The case has not been revisited since its ruling in The Court of Appeals of Oregon on May 25, 2022.
