September 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 35

Minda Haas

L AW R E V I E W

Keep Your Eye On the Baseball Rule
By James C. Kozlowski, J.D., Ph.D.

A

s illustrated by an August 2014 article in Atlanta Magazine entitled
" Foul Territory, " spectators seated behind the dugouts and along the
baselines, children and adults alike, may not have enough time to get
out the way of foul balls to avoid serious injury (www.atlantamagazine.com/
features/2014/07/14/foul-territory).
Particularly at the major-league
level, the increasing strength of the
players and speed of the game has
brought the traditional Baseball Rule
into question. As noted in the magazine article and described below, a
Georgia appeals court has denied
motions by the Atlanta Braves for a
pretrial judgment based on the Baseball Rule.
Traditionally, under the Baseball
Rule, the legal duty of landowners
owed to spectators has been limited
to providing protection in the " zone
of danger " behind home plate. To be
considered adequate, such protective

32

Parks & Recreation

screening must be sufficient to accommodate the number of spectators who
desire such protected seating during an
average game. Once such protection is
provided, the landowner has satisfied
any legal duty owed to protect spectators. Accordingly, spectators who
choose to watch the contest outside
the screened area behind home plate,
including behind the dugouts or down
the baselines, are deemed to have assumed the risk of serious injury from
foul balls entering the spectator area.
Atlanta Braves
In the case of Atlanta National

| S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | W W W. N R PA . O R G

League Baseball Club Inc. v. F.F., 2014
Ga. App. LEXIS 507 (Ga. App.
7/11/2014), a 6-year-old girl, M.F.,
was sitting with her father behind the
visitors' dugout at an Atlanta Braves
home game when she was struck by
a foul ball, suffering a skull fracture
and brain injuries.
At some point before the 2010 season, the Braves had added netting to
portions of both dugouts to protect
players from balls leaving the field
of play, but did not extend netting to
the seats directly behind the dugouts
on either side of the field. Although
a Braves representative testified that
M.F. and her family would have been
free to move to unsold protected seats
behind home plate by notifying an
usher, the same representative testified that a surcharge would apply to
seats purchased in this way. In the



September 2014 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2014 - Parks & Recreation

September 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 1
September 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 2
September 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 3
September 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 4
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