5 major league lawsuits that blindsided teams

Sports, Business, Money, News

Big sports means big money, and not just for franchises and their players. When things don’t go quite right at the stadium, fans call a foul. From seemingly frivolous offenses, like receiving a few too many text messages, to serious personal injury claims, fans have asked for, and sometimes received, large sums for damages incurred while cheering on their favorite sports teams. Here is a look at five recent sports lawsuits in the news:

1. A fan who fell asleep at a game is suing the New York Yankees, plus Major League Baseball, ESPN and announcers Dan Shulman and Jon Kruk, for defamation of character after he ended up on camera as the subject of the announcers’ jokes. The man is asking for $10 million in damages caused by the name-calling he suffered at a Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox game in April.

2. The current Yankees lawsuit is being treated as a joke in the media, but not all cases are frivolous. The Los Angeles Dodgers were found negligent last week in a civil suit that addressed the issue of safety. San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow sued the Dodgers after being badly beaten in the stadium parking lot on opening day. He suffered brain damage and is permanently disabled as a result of the attack.

A California jury found that the Dodgers had not provided adequate safety measures. As a result, the team will likely pay around $14 million to Stow to cover lifetime medical costs, a small proportion of the original $50 million he sued for.

3. John Coomer suffered a detached retina after he was hit in the face with a hot dog at a Kansas City Royals game in 2009. Who threw the dog? The team’s mascot, Sluggerrr. Coomer brought a negligence suit against the Royals in 2010, which has since been in the courts without resolution. A Missouri Supreme Court decision last month reversed a lower court’s decision, allowing Coomer the chance for a retrial.

4. Other cases stem from healthy but unhappy fans. In April, the Buffalo Bills settled a class-action lawsuit instigated by a fan who was unhappy with the number of informational text messages the team sent him. He agreed to no more than five per week but received 13 in two weeks. The Bills will pay out $3 million to those affected, primarily in debit cards redeemable only at the team’s store.

5. This spring, a San Francisco 49ers fan sued the Seattle Seahawks and the NFL for $50 million for restricting ticket sales to a Seahawks game in Seattle. The man believes that Seattle gained an unfair advantage by restricting the number of fans rooting for the opposing team, and he argues that teams don’t have the right to selectively limit ticket sales, since stadiums are partially publicly funded.

When injuries occur at sporting events, who is at fault?

Injuries that occur at a sporting event are like other personal injury cases, in that the plaintiff has to show that the defendant – in this case, the team, its owners or the stadium – behaved negligently and are at fault.

A spectator knows there are risks at a game, including the risk of being hit by a fast-moving ball or puck, for example, and as long as there are adequate safety measures in place, a lawsuit will likely fail. The plaintiff has a better chance of winning if he or she can show that the defendant could have taken reasonable measures to prevent the accident.

Photo: lev radin / Shutterstock.com