Baseball Rule
In the first, considered to be the case that established the rule, the court upheld a trial verdict against the plaintiff, holding that his decision to sit outside the netting the team had installed behind home plate constituted contributory negligence and assumption of risk on his part.
By the 1930s it was interpreted as requiring teams to erect protective screening over the stands behind home plate, a practice that had already become common in the late 19th century due to injuries from foul balls, which rose after an 1884 rule change allowed overhand pitching.
Injuries in the stands from foul balls in the late 1870s earned the area behind home plate the nickname of "the slaughter pit"; the National League's Providence Grays became the first team to erect a protective screen over that section of their park in 1879.
He, too, paid the higher price for a grandstand seat, but unlike Crane chose to sit behind the netting, halfway up the stands from the field level, on almost a line with home plate and the pitcher's mound so he could see pitches curve.
[27] She sued not only the club but Suhr,[28] the first reported instance in which a plaintiff named a batter as a defendant[e] in addition to the team in a foul ball tort, arguing that since she had requested a protected seat she had not voluntarily assumed the risk of the injury that befell her.
On the last day of the St. Louis Browns' 1931 season at Sportsman's Park, Violet Grimes attended, with a date, and chose to sit near third base at field level, well outside the area screened behind home plate.
To accommodate extra crowds expected for that year's World Series, in which the Cardinals, who shared the park with the Browns, were hosting the first two games against the Philadelphia Athletics starting the next day, temporary wooden seats had been built and added, extending 15 feet (4.6 m) into the field.
The Browns appealed; the court upheld the verdict, noting that the 60-foot (18 m) distance between the foul lines and the stands existed for a reason and that the temporary seating (closed to spectators that day) distinguished the case from Crane and the others like it in that it was not an ordinary part of games at the park.
The dissenting judge argued that that was a factual question a jury should have been allowed to decide, saying "it would be a dangerous policy for the law to pronounce a principle of immunity to ball clubs against ordinary care as related to the construction of its stands or the location or the placing of equipment which has to do with the safety of its patrons.
[41] In yet another case from Kansas City, brought by a woman who moved with her son to unprotected seats at a 1947 game on the usher's apparent assurance that they were safe only to be hospitalized after the ensuing injury, the Missouri Supreme Court called the dangers of being struck by a foul ball "open and obvious to any one who possesses normal powers of observation.
[46] With plaintiffs now effectively denied the opportunity to recover based on their own level of knowledge of the game, lawyers began adding the claim that teams were negligent in failing to warn spectators about the dangers of foul balls.
[49] In declining to revisit the Baseball Rule without contributory negligence and assumption of risk as absolute defenses to suits over foul ball injuries, courts revised the duty of care owed by teams to spectators.
Since that had been provided, the school district had met the duty of reasonable care (which was now required of New York landowners regardless of the category of visitor) and was not liable; Jasen did not think the court needed, given that holding, to reconsider the Baseball Rule under comparative negligence.
While she had been sitting in an unprotected area of Anaheim Stadium near first base, she argued that that was no longer a valid defense for the team, since under comparative negligence her stated lack of familiarity with baseball and consequent assumption that all seats were safe made her responsibility a triable issue of fact.
[47] In affirming, the appeals court first reiterated the holding from Keys that it would be "absurd, and no doubt ... resented by many patrons"[55] to expect a baseball team to individually warn everyone entering the park of the dangers from foul balls leaving the field of play.
Justice Anthony Scariano reviewed other cases, from Illinois and other states, including Wells and Akins, to conclude that "we cannot accept the suggestion advanced by the Sox that it should be they and not the jury who should determine the adequacy of the protection afforded its fans at a baseball game."
The Crespins' four-year-old son's skull was fractured by a ball hit into the stands during batting practice while the family was enjoying a pregame picnic, in an area with tables behind the outfield fence, for local Little Leaguers served by the minor league Albuquerque Isotopes.
[72] Courts have strictly adhered to the Baseball Rule, but they have almost always limited its applicability to spectators watching the game or walking through viewing areas, holding that only that activity gives rise to the assumed risk of foul ball injury.
The first plaintiff to recover after Edling was a young Wisconsin girl who was hit in the face while her mother was adjusting her dress along a highway about 90 feet (27 m) from a baseball diamond at a park operated by the local trolley company; the family was not watching the game.
[90] "Movies must be seen in a darkened room, roller coasters must accelerate and decelerate rapidly and players will bat balls into the grandstand", Justice Samuel J. Roberts wrote for a unanimous court, referring to other state tort precedents concerning inherent risks at places of amusement as well as the Baseball Rule, which he characterized as "no-duty".
[91] Almost 30 years later, the New Jersey Supreme Court held similarly in Maisonave v. Newark Bears, where the plaintiff had likewise suffered serious eye injuries after being hit by a foul ball when he turned around after hearing a warning while buying food from a vendor at a cart in an open area of the Riverfront Stadium concourse.
[95] In 2008, a divided Nevada Supreme Court came to the opposite conclusion in considering the case of a woman injured by a foul ball while sitting at a table on the concourse drinking beer at Cashman Field during a Las Vegas 51 game.
Justice Ron Parraguirre wrote for a four-justice majority that, since the team had both verbal and signed warnings and the plaintiff chose to consume her beer in an unscreened area, one where she had not in his opinion demonstrated a significant risk of injury, it had not breached what it held to be its limited duty to her.
The appeals court found much to criticize in that action, primarily that the defendants' pleadings "offered nothing in the way of either relevant or competent evidence" that the facts were beyond dispute; they also referred to mascots as an "intrical [sic] part of the game".
But the court distinguished those states from Minnesota, where the sport had been widely popular for a long time: "Hockey is played to such an extent in this region and its risks are so well known to the general public that as to the question before us there is no difference in fact between the two games so far as liability for flying baseballs and pucks is involved."
[139] In a 2018 William and Mary Law Review article calling on courts to modify or even abolish the Baseball Rule, authors Nathaniel Grow and Zachary Flagel took note of how the game has changed even since the end of the dead ball era.
Pitchers today throw the ball much harder, and batters likewise have improved their physical training and consequently their hitting power;[140] it was estimated that the Todd Frazier foul which injured the young girl at Yankee Stadium was traveling at 105 miles per hour (169 km/h) when it struck her.
"[145] But, "baseball games today are increasingly marketed as multifaceted entertainment experiences, offering spectators a variety of additional stimuli potentially distracting their attention from the action on the field", Grow and Flagler write.
"[148] It would cost MLB teams, which collectively see around $10 billion a year in revenue, mere thousands and a few days to install 60 feet (18 m) more of netting in thinner sizes which are less visually obstructive, Grow and Flagel argue.
"The insights provided by the law-and-economics movement strongly suggest that the Baseball Rule currently fails to impose liability on the lowest cost and best risk avoider—the team itself—in the most efficient and socially optimal manner", Grow and Flagel write.
