At approximately 7:00 p.m. on August 28, 2001, the owner of a baseball batting range was working on a ball machine. At the time of the accident, a customer two batting cages away was hitting baseballs. One of the baseballs passed through a hole in the protective netting material and struck the owner in the lower back area. This caused his spleen to rupture and the owner died from his injuries.

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Batting Cage Accident Results in $600K CA Jury Verdict

Property owners and operators in California owe duties of care to protect people who are legally present on their properties from dangerous conditions. Property owners must either know about the existence of the hazardous condition or should know about it for liability to attach. They must take steps to correct hazards about which they know or should have known and to warn visitors to their property about their existence. In Lefebvre v. NC Valley Baseball, LLC, Stanislaus County Superior Court No. 2019247, the court considered the concepts of notice and of assumption of the risk in a case involving a man who was injured at a batting cage by a baseball.

Factual background of the case

Craig Lefebvre was a 23-year-old coach for a team from NC Valley Baseball, LLC. On Jan. 21, 2016, Lefebvre was getting ready to leave the batting cage location in Modesto when he was stopped by a parent to talk. As Lefebvre stopped on the walkway between two of the batting areas, a foul ball flew through the protective netting and struck him in the groin.

Lefebvre suffered a fracture of his right testicle in the incident. He underwent surgery on his testicle to try to repair the damage. The surgery resulted in his loss of almost half of the volume of the testicle and left him suffering from chronic testicular pain. Lefebvre filed a lawsuit against the facility’s owner for negligence in failing to repair or to replace the netting under a theory of premises liability.

Plaintiff’s arguments

The plaintiff argued that the netting was used and donated at the time of its installation in 2012. He also argued that the defendant did not have a net inspection schedule in place and that there wasn’t any tracking of repairs to the netting that were performed by the defendant. He also argued that the defendant had new netting available that had not been installed. There were no signs warning of the dangerous conditions, and it was uncontested that the ball went through the netting. Finally, he argued that the defendant should have installed double netting along the walkway and designed the facility improperly by placing the walkway between two batting lanes.

Defendant’s arguments

The defendant argued that it was common knowledge that people should not use the walkway when active batting practice was going on in the two adjacent batting lanes. The defendant also argued that the plaintiff was 100 percent at fault in his own accident because of his years of experience with baseball.

Trial and verdict

The trial lasted for eight days before the case was sent to the jury. The jury deliberated for 1 3/4 hours before returning a verdict in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of $600,000. The jury found that the defendant was completely liable and did not find that the plaintiff had any contributory negligence in the action.

The jury assessed past economic damages in the amount of $18,000 and future economic damages in the amount of $104,000. They also awarded $100,000 in past non-economic damages and $378,000 in future non-economic damages.

Understanding notice of conditions and assumption of the risk

In California, property owners owe a duty of care to third parties who enter the premises to exercise ordinary reasonable care to keep the property in a safe condition. If people are injured by a hazardous condition that exists on the property, the owners may be liable if they knew about the dangerous condition or should have known about its existence and failed to correct it or to adequately warn others of its presence. Owners may be deemed to have constructive notice of the existence of a condition, which means that the condition is one that the owner should have known about.

Owners will be deemed to have constructive notice of a hazardous condition if the condition is one that lasted for a long enough period of time that it should have been discovered by the property owner. The time period must be enough that the owner would have had a reasonable time to discover and to repair the hazard, protect visitors from being harmed by the condition or to adequately warn them of its existence. In this case, the faulty netting was used when it was installed four years before the incident. The parties did not dispute that the ball came through the netting. The defendant admitted that it did not have a schedule for inspecting the netting or a record of repairs that were made to it. There also were no warnings posted to warn visitors about the netting.

In some cases, people will be deemed to have assumed the risk of injury by their participating in an activity. While the defendant tried to argue that the plaintiff assumed the risk of injury by stopping to talk to a parent on the walkway, the argument failed. In California, a plaintiff who is injured and who is deemed to have assumed the risk of injury by participating in an activity despite knowing of the danger may be deemed to have some comparative fault. In Lefevbre’s case, the jury found that he did not assume the risk and thus did not share any fault, allowing him to recover the gross amount that was awarded to him.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4312686&forum_id=2#38608181)

EMORY, Va. - A scary accident lands a college softball player in the hospital. It happened Friday on the campus of Emory and Henry College.

College freshman and softball player Brittany Scott is now at home recovering, after being hit in the head by a line drive.

"She's doing well," said head softball coach Tommy Forrester. "She's resting. I talked to her this morning and she has a major headache."

Forrester told us Scott and two other players were doing extra batting practice on their own when the accident happened.

"As a softball player, as a baseball player, hitting in the cage is very normal and you have a screen and you get behind the screen," said Forrester.

He told us Scott wasn't far enough behind the screen and was hit in the head. Forrester also said Scott wasn't wearing a helmet.

Forrester told us he just happened to be working late that night when a player rushed in to get him.

"She was going into significant convulsions so they ended up airlifting her to Bristol Regional hospital" Forrester described.

He told us that while he went to the hospital with Scott, the team got together and prayed.

"We all became really close and really quiet," said senior and team captain Cortney Hasley. "I knew people were really upset."

She told us shortly after they got together, they found out Scott's convulsions had stopped and her condition was improving.

Hasley said a few minutes later they got another shocking phone call. Other students around campus had organized a candlelight vigil for Scott and the softball team.

"We were all surrounded by 100 people in our Memorial Chapel on campus," Hasley said. "The team was at the front of the church and we were surrounded by candles in the middle of us."

She told us the vigil was a miracle.

"It's a Friday night, it's a college town," she said. "I'm sure people probably had other things they needed to do than be in a chapel and have to deal with a situation like this."

Hasley told us they were overwhelmed by the support for Scott.

"I hope she knows what she means to this community and how wonderful of an influence she's been," said Hasley. "She is one of the strongest people I know."

We found out that Scott has a concussion but no permanent damage. Her coaches hope she'll be able to return to classes next week.

Head coach Forrester told us they will be meeting with the athletic director on Monday to "see what policies need to get in place to make sure our athletes are being as safe as they can be."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4312686&forum_id=2#38608207)

GLENDALE — Julius Riofrir, the 17-year-old who was hit by a baseball on Sunday, died early Tuesday morning after he was removed from a life-support system.

Riofrir, the eldest son of Emmanuel and Julie Riofrir of Glendale, had been declared brain-dead Monday due to a severe head injury.

Family members, who opted to keep him alive until organ donation arrangements could be made, said goodbye to him at about 12:30 a.m. when his ventilator was shut off, said family members and Steve Willis, spokesman for Glendale Adventist Medical Center.

A small group of friends and coaches was also present, said Fred Lingad, Riofrir’s American Legion baseball team coach, who was among them.

Later in the morning, doctors removed Riofrir’s liver and kidneys for the Regional Organ Procurement Agency of Southern California, which had arranged for their transplant.

Names of recipients are kept confidential, but all are patients who have been waiting for transplants in hospitals in the Los Angeles area, said Willis.

Riofrir, the fifth young athlete to die in a sports accident in the last year in Southern California, was pitching to Fernando Rios, 18, in a batting cage at Stengel Field in Glendale just before an American Legion game Sunday evening.

Rios hit a low line drive to the left, according to Glendale police. The ball apparently ricocheted off the side of the batting cage, clearing the L-shaped screen which protected Riofrir, and struck him in the temple.

He collapsed at the scene, and was placed on a ventilator as soon as he arrived at the hospital. Attempts to treat the swelling in his brain with medication were unsuccessful, doctors said.

The batting cage, a large, rectangular frame enclosed by chain-link fencing, was built several years ago by the Glendale city parks department for use by Glendale Community College, and other leagues that reserve the fields, said city parks director Nello Iacono.

Lingad and other coaches believe, based on the angle of the line drive Rios described, that the ball hit a concrete footing around the dirt floor of the batting cage.

The ground-level concrete, which holds the chain-link fence posts, has become more exposed over the years, perhaps from rain washing some of the dirt away, according to Glendale Community College baseball Coach Denny Barrett. It now juts four inches or so above the ground, he said.

Netting inside the cage suspended at a distance of a foot or two from the sides is supposed to slow down balls before they can ricochet off the concrete or sides.

But the nets in the cage tend to shift in the wind, Barrett said. And on Monday, the bottom of the netting was resting against the concrete in several places, and so would not have slowed a ball headed that way.

*

Saul Ickovitz, owner of Baseball City, a baseball school in Agoura Hills, said nets should be “two or three feet from the sides [of a cage], even at the bottom. . . . The idea is not to have anything ricochet, and if the net is inside the cage, the balls just roll off.”

A spokesman for Memphis Net and Twine, a company that makes baseball-cage nets, agreed: A batting cage “cannot have a hard surface,” he said. “We tell people in putting nets up they should allow at least one foot on each side.”

Iacono said the city is awaiting the results of the police investigation to decide what to do. The cage has been locked in the meantime.

Barrett said the protruding concrete and swaying nets should be fixed before the cage is used again, and GCC pitchers may be required to wear helmets in the future. “Obviously, when you look at it now, you can see there has to be a change,” he said.

Lingad, who calls the incident a freak accident, said Tuesday that he, too, sees problems with the cage. “The concrete on the side--that is not right,” he said. But, he added, “any time where you are in a position where balls and bats are flying, something could happen.”

Lingad said Riofrir’s team, which hasn’t played since the accident, will resume its season on Saturday.

The team met Tuesday with Riofrir’s sister Janssen, who told players that, “being Julius, he would want us to continue playing,” said Lingad. “She told us to continue playing and to keep the spirit with us.”

The team will wear armbands with Riofrir’s number, 8, on their uniforms, he added.

Steve Willis, communication manager for Glendale Adventist Medical Center, said the Riofrir family has established a memorial fund in Julius’ name at Glendale Federal Bank at 401 N. Brand Blvd. For information, call (818) 500-2289.

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