Little Leaguer sues for injury...

lewpac

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In either Mass. or Connecticut (sorry), a 12 year old Little League player slides into second and tears up his knee. His mom sues the Little League and wins over $120,000.00.

The Mother says the boy wasn't coached the correct way to slide, and that something was wrong with the way the base was positioned. Some crazy accusation like that, but the Little League decided to settle rather than run it through the court.

Isn't this a dangerous prescedent to set? Who would want to coach kid sports with this stuff going on? Little League coaches are all volunteer coast to coast. Who would want to stick their neck out like that if this type of baloney is possible to happen?

What's next? "My kid struck out, and was emotionally damaged by it, so I'm suing the Little League"???
 
That is ridicilous, hopefully it gets over turned on appeal. When you play sports you have to assume the risk of injuries in the natural flow of the game, which sliding into second obviously is.
 
Doomsday;2891028 said:
That is ridicilous, hopefully it gets over turned on appeal. When you play sports you have to assume the risk of injuries in the natural flow of the game, which sliding into second obviously is.


There is no appeal, because the Little League settled out of court. That's tantamount to pleading "no contest", so it's over.

I coach Little Leage in our area, and even sponser the team. I've seen a couple/few injuries that easily are on par with this one. Just this last June, our pitcher (11 year old) got a shot directly back at him, cracked him in the left shin area and it got fractured. Last year, one of our better kids whose got braces took a line drive right in the kisser. His braces went through his lower lip. They had to do emergency stuff on his braces and he wore about eight stiches on his lip the rest of the season. Another kid mis-played a routine pop-up, and he wore a swollen shiner on his right eye socket for weeks.

And not ONE PARENT made a peep about "liability" or suing anyone. Because they're sane like 99.9 of other parents who let their kids play sports. It's part of the game. You let your kid play sports, and you never know when a kid's gonna' come home with some injure that needs attention.

Stuff happens in all sports, pee-wee all the way up the pros. This is the kind of stuff that scares the bejesus out of good, interested and volunteer-type's who decide to just not get involved.

I'm rambling on about this because it's of great interest to me, being a coach and on the LL Board in our area. We ALWAYS NEED more grown-ups to step up and help out. Be it an asst. coach, dug-out parent, umpires, etc..........it takes a little bit of effort to pull off a Little League season the right way. In our League, there's around 8-10 teams. That's a lot of kids who need grown-ups to run things. And every year, we see less and less adults interested in getting involved.

I think, and I've even heard a few rumors, that a reason for this is the litigeous nature of our society. Everyone is "sue happy". Especially when it comes to kids. A lot of folks are scared to death to be put in a position where some kid can accuse an adult of something, anything that would practically end that adults life in the community.

I myself......................I'll admit it...............I have two daughters, one 13 and the other is 9. My boy is 11. All three play soccer, which is just starting this past week. I refuse to get involved in any responsible way with coaching the girls teams or helping out at practice or during games. The reason why is because I had this buddy who coached the girls teams two years ago, and was falsly accused in a sexual way by a couple girls on the team he was the coach of.

It went round and round and round the soccer community and the area in general. Never made the papers, but everyone knew about it and everyone had an opinion about it. And alot of the opinions................I wouldn't wish what I heard from some folks on my worst enemy. Turned out that it was all, of course, totally false. Turned out that the one girls parents were rival's in business with this guy, and THEY were the straw that was stirring this nasty drink. It was probably at or near the LOWEST thing that any human being could do to another human being. And to use little girls to push your agenda, that was just gutter stuff.

Of course, he'll wear that Scarlet Letter on his chest for the rest of his life in some people's eyes. Once an accusation like THAT is made, your branded for life even if your total exhonorated.

Anyway, scared the hell out of me, and I'll NEVER coach ANYTHING with girls involved............NEVER!!!
 
Yea, it is a sticky situation. When I was in college I worked for Sears and there were 2 teenage girls stranded at the mall at closing and neither could get a hold of their parents. I wasnt going to leave them there alone but at the same time I didnt think it would be a good idea to drive em home, so I ended up calling the police so they could deal with the situation. I hated to call the police but it wasnt worth the risk of having a parent flip out or getting a false accusation. Pretty sad when you have to worry about law suits before doing the right thing, but unfortunately that is the world we live in.
 
Doomsday;2891153 said:
Yea, it is a sticky situation. When I was in college I worked for Sears and there were 2 teenage girls stranded at the mall at closing and neither could get a hold of their parents. I wasnt going to leave them there alone but at the same time I didnt think it would be a good idea to drive em home, so I ended up calling the police so they could deal with the situation. I hated to call the police but it wasnt worth the risk of having a parent flip out or getting a false accusation. Pretty sad when you have to worry about law suits before doing the right thing, but unfortunately that is the world we live in.

Good story. Another case of a "good people" who've been reduced to "don't get involved" out of fear. It's a callouse expose' of what we've become in 2009.

But back to the kids.........Little League, Soccer....................

Folks just don't need any more grief in theirl lives that they don't already have. And the "volunteer" thing takes the biggest hit. There's no pay in coaching LL Baseball or Soccer or Pee-Wee football, so the risk far outweighs the gain.

After reading this story, I gotta' tell ya' that this next season of LL Baseball, of which MY KID PLAYS and is an All-Star....................It's now in my mind that at any moment, I might get named in some lawsuit because one of my players got a hang-nail on MY TIME. Makes you wonder if you want to even throw your hat in the ring............
 
From what I can tell, the kid (or his mother) sued for $125,000, but they settled. They very likely did not settle for the full $125,000. They may have settled for medical costs alone. I can't tell from the reports.

From what I remember about sports injury cases, it seems pretty foolish to settle unless it was a very small amount. Without knowing more details, it seems as though the kid and his mother had very little chance of actually winning, but the reality is that the cost of defending the suit might have been more than just settling for a small amount. In other words, they could spend $20,000 (just throwing a number out there) defending the suit and winning or settle for $15,000.
 
you can pretty much sue for anything nowadays, so she wouldn't be setting any kind of precedent here
 
Fox reported last night that they settled for 125K. I don't know if that was accurate but it's unfortunate that this has happened. It's hard enough to get people to volunteer. Hard enough to fund a team. Now, you gotta deal with this and you know, once presidence is set, their will be people coming out of the woodwork. I think that Little League and all organizations like this should probably introduce language that protects them from this sort of thing. Perhaps one of the resident Barristers can address this better. Waiver language or Little League is as good as dead.
 
ABQCOWBOY;2891947 said:
Fox reported last night that they settled for 125K. I don't know if that was accurate but it's unfortunate that this has happened. It's hard enough to get people to volunteer. Hard enough to fund a team. Now, you gotta deal with this and you know, once presidence is set, their will be people coming out of the woodwork. I think that Little League and all organizations like this should probably introduce language that protects them from this sort of thing. Perhaps one of the resident Barristers can address this better. Waiver language or Little League is as good as dead.

if places can state that they can't be held liable for people losing their goods

then Little League can definitely write up something that they can't be held liable for injuries in a physical sport
 

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