For the Love of Baseball

Before COVID took over our world, one thing that I liked to do was go to baseball games. I especially enjoyed sitting in the lower seats behind the netting, hoping to catch a foul ball. It is a quintessential American activity. I'm not sure Tom Cruise likes baseball as he has yet to really throw one.

Why is the netting behind the plate? To protect the crowd from a foul tipped ball that is most likely flying at a very high velocity. Hit in the head by such a ball, you could quickly find yourself dead. Because we all understand the risk and still choose to sit in these expensive seats, any competent attorney is going to argue that there is a knowing and voluntary assumption of risk.

What About Hockey?

Hockey pucks are made of rubber and are frozen before used (yes, they keep the pucks in a freezer just off the ice, taking them out as needed). Hockey pucks deflect and can often go into the audience hitting somebody. Back in 2002, one of these pucks at a Columbus Blue Jackets game deflected and hit Brittany Cecil in the temple.She died two days later(Links to an external site.). Columbus is a football town through and through (the same can be said for Ohio) because of Ohio State's football team as well as two professional teams, the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals. Baseball is also popular, but hockey did not have a permanent presence until an NHL expansion franchise was awarded in 2000 (and they have for the most part been a lousy team ever since). Two years later Brittany Cecil was hit and died.

In response the NHL has implemented additional netting requirements around the ice to prevent similar occurrences from happening again.

Question Presented

While the parties entered into an out of court settlement, was there an assumption of risk by Brittany Cecil in Columbus, Ohio?

Does your answer change if the year was 1993 and she was in California at an Anaheim Ducks game (the Ducks first started playing in 1993)? Would your answer change if you were in Toronto, Ontario when the Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967? To be clear, do not focus on the dates, but rather the fact that hockey was not big in California until recently (some would argue it is still not yet big) and in Toronto and the rest of Canada, it has been a way of life for many generations.