Learning How To Recover

Injured While Attending A Baseball Game? Understand Your Rights

19 June 2015 by Susie Torres

With baseball season underway, you may find yourself wanting to head out to a game at your favorite baseball team's stadium. It's a great way to spend an evening cheering on your team, but did you ever think about how you could get injured while attending the game? While slip and fall injuries can happen when navigating the steep steps to get to your seat, you can also be hit by a foul ball. If this happens to you, do you know what your rights are? You may be surprised to learn the answer.

Slip And Fall Injuries

The key to any slip and fall injury is proving that the facility was somehow negligent in a way that caused your slip and fall. Simply falling due to a lack of self-awareness to your surroundings is not enough.

For example, there may have been a spill on the stairs leading to your seat, and the spill was never cleaned during the game after several innings. Not seeing the spill is what eventually caused you to take a nasty tumble down the stadium steps. There may have been a broken sink in a bathroom that spilled water all over the floor for several innings, and you slipped on the water on your was back to your seat to see what all the cheering was about. These are situations where you have a viable personal injury lawsuit.

The stadium will not be responsible for a slip and fall if you are intoxicated, or not watching where you are walking. The stadium is also not responsible if you slipped and fell due to a spill that only happened moments earlier because they did not have reasonable time to clean it up. These are situations that the owner of the facility cannot control, and would not be held responsible for.

Foul Ball Injuries

When you turn your ticket over you may have noticed the disclaimer stating that baseballs occasionally go into the stands, and that you assume a risk of being injured by attending the game. Is the disclaimer valid if you are seriously injured? Unfortunately, it is.

The stadium does need to minimize risks of injury in any way that they can. This includes putting a protective netting behind the batters box, where foul balls often travel fast and can have high impact. Nets are not required around the outfield for home runs, because the ball often loses much of its speed by the time it reaches the stands.

When a safety measure fails, such as the protecting netting, you will have a valid case for a personal injury lawsuit. If you are sitting outside protective netting, it is your responsibility to be aware of what is happening on the field at all times so you are not caught off guard by foul balls.

If you do suffer an injury while attending a baseball game, speak to a personal injury lawyer (such as one from Chiacchia & Fleming LLP) about your options to receive compensation for your injuries. There may be safety measures you were unaware of that the stadium ignored, and your injury lawsuit may still be valid.

Share

Search