Flying Fenway Bat Calls New Attention To The Baseball Rule

A tragic accident often leads to calls for re-examination of a long-accepted part of culture. This past week, after a broken bat at Fenway Park seriously injured a fan, commentators are calling for a re-examination of the baseball rule: stadium owners and operators have only a limited duty to fans to protect them from baseballs or other items flying from the field of play. Every few years the baseball rule is challenged. For example, a 2009 accident at a Houston Astros game resulted in a fan losing her eye. That case wound its way through the Texas courts, with the plaintiff's claims shut down at both the trial and appellate levels; she did not even garner an audience with the Texas Supreme Court. The baseball rule was too strong.

Is the recent accident at Fenway Park any different? Should the fact that the injury was caused by a flying piece of a broken bat, and not just a foul ball, call for reconsideration of the limited duty to protect fans? Or should recent events merely serve as an excuse or motivation to consider the obligation of the MLB, stadium owners and operators to protect a larger segment of fans with netting?

The Baseball Rule

In most jurisdictions, including Massachusetts, a stadium owner or operator - including towns, schools, or any entity that operates a ballpark - owes only a limited duty to fans to protect them from baseballs hit into the stands. The stadium owner must provide "adequately screened seats for all those who wish to sit behind a screen."1 A form of this rule is in place in most jurisdictions, with courts looking to the adequacy of the screening or other protection in the most dangerous areas of the stadium, but holding in essence no duty to fans elsewhere. For example, New York and New Jersey have broad no-duty rules as applied to fans. So long as there is a sufficient screen behind home plate, the stadium owner has no duty to fans elsewhere in the stadium, including areas outside the stands.2 Taking a more measured approach, Pennsylvania is consistent with New York and New Jersey when fans are still in the stands but has allowed a case to proceed when a fan was struck in an interior walkway.3

The baseball rule has a firm foundation in Massachusetts, with the high court first applying it in 1950. The court, after reviewing Massachusetts case law pertaining to hockey arenas as well as baseball cases from other jurisdictions, found that "it has uniformly been held - and correctly we think - that a spectator familiar with the game assumes the reasonable risks and hazards inherent in the game."4 In that case, and most others involving the baseball rule, the danger to the fan, of course, is a foul ball and not a shattered wooden bat. Is there a chance the courts may consider a bat flying into the stands as a common enough event that such are also considered inherent to the game?

To Net or Not to Net - The Balance Between Safety and the Nature...