Connecticut Baseball Law
by Ryan McKeen
Sometimes I love reading cases.
In D’Amico v. Tomkalski, 1999 WL 162985 (1999), Judge Pellegrino writes a home run of an opinion.
The plaintiff, a baserunner in a softball game, was struck by a ball thrown by a second baseman as he was either on the base path or moving out of the base path.
The runner then sued the second baseman under two theories: negligence and recklessness. The defendant moved to strike the plaintiff’s negligence count.
Under existing Connecticut law at the time, the Supreme Court had held that a plaintiff’s injury during a soccer game was not compensable under a negligence theory. Jaworski v. Kiernan, 241 Conn. 399 (1997).
The plaintiff argued that the Court’s ruling in Jaworski only applied to contact sports and that softball was not a contact sport.
Here’s what Judge Pellegrino had to say in response to the plaintiff’s argument:
A game where a ball is thrown, even at a slow speed, toward a batter so that it will be hit and, if possible caught by fielders poses risk of injury.The injury can arise from a batter being hit, a runner being struck, a fielder misjudging the trajectory of a hit or thrown ball. Even professional players are injured by such unintentional mistakes. Indeed such occurrences are recorded in official statistics called “errors.” Baseball is a contact sport.
There you have it: baseball is a contact sport.
July 14th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Now that is funny, I agree with the ruling. This is an example of the system working. When someone sues for something they shouldn't the generally don't get anything. One can always throw out an extreme example on either side but in general we have the greatest justice system in the world and it works.
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