Not a Tortfeasor
Almost exactly a year ago in the WLF Legal Pulse, WLF general counsel Mark Chenoweth (a Kansas native and Royals fan) called foul on the Missouri Supreme Court for ordering a new trial in the case of a fan that alleged a hot dog, tossed by the Kansas City Royals’ mascot Sluggerrr (pictured left), caused an eye injury.
We recently learned that on June 17, a Jackson County jury, after a wasteful second trial, once again found the Royals not responsible for the fan’s injuries. In addition, it found the fan was not responsible for the injury either. In the original trial, the jury found him 100% responsible for his injuries. The second jury reached the correct decision without the benefit of the “Baseball Rule,” which, as pointed out in last year’s commentary, the Missouri high court inexplicably ruled inapplicable.
The plaintiff’s lawyer told the Kansas City Star that he “hoped the trial ‘sent a message’ to Major League Baseball.” The nature of such a message is unclear, however, especially given the fact that the fan lost his suit and the team won even without the protection of the Baseball Rule.
Unfortunately, the result in Coomer v. Kansas City Royals Baseball Corp. won’t put an end to plaintiffs’ lawyers’ persistent efforts to shift responsibility for ballpark injuries from inattentive fans to deep-pocketed sports franchises. For instance, a Seattle plaintiffs’ firm that specializes in bet-the-company lawsuits has filed a class action in the Northern District of California against Major League Baseball alleging common law negligence and California Unfair Competition Act violations for its failure to provide a safe fan experience. The suit amounts to a frontal assault on the Baseball Rule.
One of the arguments the class makes in support of its negligence claim: baseball teams’ allegedly distracting efforts to entertain fans with activities such as food tosses.