Assume you're a trainer for an amateur hockey team. You attend to injuries, help players condition for games, develop daily training regimens and sometimes have close calls with pucks or icy surfaces. This is the world of sports, after all, so you recognize these hazards and often tend to the medical needs of the players.
But what if one day a high-velocity puck makes contact with the area around your right eye, fracturing those fragile bones, resulting in permanent vision loss?
Tough luck, right? Not so fast, according to the opinion of the Appellate Court of Illinois for the Second District (State of Illinois), which reversed a dismissal of two counts and ultimately found that the plaintiff's personal injury claims against the Chicago Steel hockey team were valid.
At issue was the so-called "contact sports doctrine," which basically holds participants in a contact sport liable for their own injuries sustained while playing, unless they're caused by "wilful and wanton" conduct. In this case, the puck-induced injury was purely accidental.
Michael Weisberg sued for both general negligence (strict liability) and for willful and wanton conduct (he claims a player was intentionally shooting pucks at water bottles near the bench) after suffering the aforementioned injury to his eye. The first two counts were dismissed based on the contact sports doctrine, upon the defendants' claim that he was in fact a participant, so he appealed.
The appellate justices relied on a number of other cases, including one from the California Supreme Court, in coming to its conclusion:
"We conclude that permitting plaintiff to maintain a cause of action against defendants based on ordinary negligence would not violate the spirit and purpose of the contact sports exception... plaintiff was not a player for the Chicago Steel,
not otherwise affiliated with the Chicago Steel, and not otherwise partaking in the sport of hockey."
This decision is an interesting example of how liability is determined in a unique setting with a higher probability of accidents.
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Defenses to Negligence Claims (FindLaw)
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NASCAR Fans Injured at Talladega: Spectator Safety and the Law (FindLaw Injured Blog)
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Chicago Injury Attorneys (FindLaw)
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