SANTA ANA, Calif. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who sat in an open field behind the third-base dugout can sue a small California college for failing to warn her she could be hit by a foul ball, an appeals court ruled, widening exceptions to the state’s longstanding “baseball rule” protecting teams and stadium owners against lawsuits over errant balls.
Calling a trial court’s interpretation of the baseball rule “cramped” and oversimplified, the Fourth Appellate District court reinstated a suit by Monica Mayes against La Sierra University. Mayes sued the 1,500-student college in Riverside after she took a foul ball directly in the face during a 2018 intercollegiate playoff game.
A trial court dismissed her lawsuit under California’s assumption-of-the-risk doctrine, which holds spectators responsible for the normal risks of attending sports events. But the appeals court reversed, saying a jury must decide whether La Sierra exposed Mayes to an unreasonable level of risk by failing to post signs warning her there was no netting to catch foul balls and allowing spectators to mill around freely in the field, potentially obstructing her view of incoming balls.
“The baseball rule does not account for the duties of owners and operators of sports venues to take reasonable steps to minimize the inherent risks of injury to their customers or spectators, if such steps can be taken without changing the nature of the sport or the activity,” the appeals court ruled in a Jan. 7 decision.
A jury might conclude warnings were unnecessary “because it was obvious to anyone who attended a game at La Sierra’s field that there was no protective netting over the dugouts,” the court said. But that was a contested fact question that couldn’t be disposed of in summary judgment, the court concluded.
La Sierra argued it had no duty to protect Mayes, citing the rule under which courts for more than a century refused to hold teams and stadium owners liable for game-related spectator injuries. The trial judge agreed, calling it a “textbook primary assumption of the risk case.”
The appeals court noted that California courts upheld the baseball rule as recently as 1985 but began to chip away at it with decisions like a 1997 ruling that a spectator could sue over the claim he was distracted by the antics of a team mascot and didn’t see a foul ball coming his way.
La Sierra said it had no duty to protect Mayes because hers was the only report of a spectator being hit by a foul ball since 2009. The college also said she chose to sit behind the third-base dugout in range of foul balls. But the appeals court said “although Mayes chose her own, unscreened seat along the third-base line, she arguably did not have a reasonable alternative, given that there was only one open seat in the bleachers, she needed two seats because she was attending the game with her husband, and the bleachers were unstable.”
And while Mayes had attended “300 to 400” baseball games where her sons were playing, the court said she had no experience with an unprotected field and assumed she was safe.
“Mayes did not look for the protective netting but expected it to be there,” the court said. “There were no posted signs at La Sierra’s field, telling spectators that the only protected seats were behind home plate.”
Mayes hired an expert, Gil Fried, who specializes in “foul ball and hockey puck-related cases.”
He said La Sierra violated the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 60-foot standard for spectator stands because the dugout was only 32 feet from the third-base line and Mayes was allowed to sit 60 feet away. It was also dangerous to allow spectators to “walk around freely” during the game, Fried testified. The $8,000 to $12,000 cost of netting “is cheap compared to the cost of medical services for just one injury,” the paid expert testified.
The appeals court also cited a 2020 decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, issued after Mayes sued, which revived a lawsuit by a 12-year-old girl who had been hit by a ball at a professional baseball game. The court ruled that stadium owners should have installed protective netting because it was recommended by “experience baseball professionals” and wouldn’t fundamentally alter the game.