In American tort law, the Baseball RuleNathaniel Grow and Zachary Flagel, "The Faulty Law and Economics of the 'Baseball Rule' ", 60 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 59, 63–64 (2018). is an exculpatory clause applicable to baseball games with spectators; it holds that a baseball team or its sponsoring organization cannot be held liable for injuries suffered by a spectator struck by a foul ball batted into the stands, under most circumstances, as long as the team has offered some protected seating in the areas where foul balls are most likely to cause injuries. This is considered within the standard of reasonable care that teams owe to spectators, although in recent decades it has more often been characterized as a limited- or no-duty rule, and applied to ice hockey and golf as well. It is largely a matter of case law in state courts, although four states have codified it.
The rule arose from a pair of 1910s decisions by the Missouri Court of Appeals, both considering suits filed by spectators at home games of the minor league Kansas City Blues. In the first, considered to be the case that established the rule, the court upheld a trial verdict against the plaintiff, holding that his decision to sit outside the netting the team had installed behind home plate constituted contributory negligence and assumption of risk on his part. Conversely, in the second, decided a year later, the court upheld a verdict for a plaintiff who had been struck in the eye by a foul ball that passed through a hole in the netting between him and home plate. Other state courts accepted those cases as precedent and used them to decide similar cases.
By the 1930s it was interpreted as requiring teams to erect protective screening over the stands behind home plate, a practice that had already become common in the late 19th century due to injuries from foul balls, which rose after an 1884 rule change allowed overhand pitching. Courts have seen it as balancing the team's duty of care toward spectators with the spectators' interest in having an unobstructed view of the game available and perhaps being able to take home a recovered foul ball as a souvenir. It has been held to apply in some other situations besides foul balls—when a player deliberately threw the ball into the stands as a souvenir, for instance—but not in others, such as errant pitches from a relief pitcher warming up in the bullpen, situations where multiple balls are in play (such as (formerly) batting practice), where struck spectators are not in the seating areas of the venue or where they may have been distracted by the team's mascot.
In the wake of some serious injuries caused by foul balls in Major League Baseball (MLB) parks in the 2010s, including the first foul-ball spectator death at an MLB game in almost 50 years, there have been calls for the rule to be re-examined or abolished altogether, as more spectators are struck by a foul ball than players in the game are hit by a pitch. While MLB has required all of its teams to extend their protective screens to cover the area to the far end of the dugout on either side of the field, critics note that it is no longer possible for spectators to choose to sit under those screens given that all seats in the venue are reserved for those who buy them, many for the entire season. Further, they say, balls are hit harder and spectators, who on average now sit closer to the field than they did in 1913, have more distractions. Two states' supreme courts have declined to adopt the rule, which has been criticized as a relic of the era before the adoption of comparative negligence; a William and Mary Law Review article further argues that the Baseball Rule fails the law and economics standards of optimally allocated tort liability.
History
Development of modern game
Professional baseball in the United States began in 1869. In those early years, there was little risk of injury from a ball hit into the stands. While seats were located as close as a few feet (1–2 m) from the foul lines, putting fans at risk of being hit by overthrown balls or lost bats, there was less risk from batted balls. At the time, the rules required pitchers to not only deliver the ball underhand, but with their arms barely bent and from below the waist. In addition, batters could and did request the ball be pitched to a specific position over the plate.J.G. Hylton, "A Foul Ball in the Courtroom: The Baseball Spectator Injury as a Case of First Impression", 38 Tulsa L. Rev. 485, 487–88 (2013)
As a result, most games were dominated by offense, with fielding providing most defense, and games often ended with very high scores by modern standards. One or sometimes both teams exceeding 100 runs in a game was not unusual. Pitchers, some of whom had learned to throw the ball very fast even underhand, began to influence the game and drive down scores with the help of gradual rule changes that allowed the ball to be delivered from higher up, with the arm more cocked, making the first curveballs possible. Injuries in the stands from foul balls in the late 1870s earned the area behind home plate the nickname of "the slaughter pit"; the National League's Providence Grays became the first team to erect a protective screen over that section of their park in 1879.
In 1884 the evolution to modern pitching was completed when overhand pitching was allowed. Consequently it became much harder for hitters to direct the ball into fair territory when they connected with it. More teams began erecting backstops, as they came to be called, similar to those the Grays had put up, but they were not always popular with fans. The Milwaukee Northwestern League team removed theirs after two weeks of fan complaints that they unduly obstructed their view of play.
19th-century tort law
Fatalities from foul balls occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; many of those struck and killed were children watching or otherwise in proximity to amateur games. In one unusual 1902 incident, a 20-year-old Ohio man watching a game was stabbed through the heart when a friend who was lending him a knife was struck by a foul ball as he did; after telling his friends he was not badly hurt, he began bleeding uncontrollably and died a few minutes later. The Washington Star reported in 1888 that a man claiming to have been hit by a ball (whether batted or thrown was not clear) at a Washington Statesmen game the year before had filed suit; if he had, it did not result in a published opinion.Foul Ball, 486n4
Media reports from the era suggest that there were other lawsuits besides the 1888 Washington lawsuit against baseball teams over foul ball injuries around the turn of the century, but none were reported. They may have been disposed through settlement, trial or withdrawal. It has also been suggested that the law concerning torts brought by public invitees such as spectators at a baseball game was not seen as favorable to such suits.Foul Ball, 489-92
Up to the time of baseball's origins in the United States, common law treated those on private property not generally open to the public, like sporting venues, but on the property with the owner's permission, as licensees. The property owner owed them no other duty of care than to protect them from unforeseeable hazards incident to the conditions of the property. That standard would have likely precluded any suit over injuries from a foul ball as they were a foreseeable risk.
However, in 1866 an English court's decision, Indermaur v. Dames, held that a landowner was indeed liable for damages from personally known hazards or hazards the landowner reasonably could have been expected to. Since the plaintiff was there for business reasons, to inspect a faulty gas regulator, when he fell through the defendant's floor and suffered injury, the Court of Common Pleas held he was not a licensee but a visitor or invitee, there to transact business mutually beneficial to both parties, a distinction recent cases had begun to recognize but not formalize. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court accepted Indermaur as precedent two years later in a similar case of a ship damaged by a submerged rock, and it would eventually be so recognized by the courts of 26 statesFoul Ball, 490n28 and the U.S. Supreme Court.Bennett v. Railroad Company,
In 1883 the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that a patron of a place of public amusement was an invitee, and that the defendant, a dance hall, had a duty to maintain the premises safely. Legal scholar Seymour Thompson wrote in a popular work on tort law that the duties of business owners towards invitees, or business visitors as they were now known, applied with "special force to ... establishments to which the public are invited in large numbers." As the 20th century dawned, courts had applied that principle to a wide variety of such businesses, including sports venues.
However, despite a more favorable legal climate, there were no reported cases over foul ball injuries. Marquette law professor J.G. Hylton, in a history of the origins of the Baseball Rule, notes that the visitor principle had primarily decided cases where the issues with the property had existed prior to the plaintiff's entry on to it and thus a plaintiff could claim both that the defendant knew of the defect and he himself did not, whereas most spectators at a baseball game would have known that foul balls frequently entered the stands at high speed. There had not been many cases where the plaintiffs' knowledge of the possible risks was a factor.
Also, at the time, American courts recognized assumption of risk and contributory negligence, when proven, as absolute bars to any recovery by a plaintiff. "If [they] knew of the dangers of foul balls and chose to sit in an unprotected seat," Hylton writes, "then he or she opened himself up to the charge that his or her own negligence ... had contributed to his or her injury." He also speculates that the dominant cultural ethos of rugged individualism during the Gilded Age and early Progressive Era may have led injured spectators to fault themselves, and only themselves, for their injury.
The earliest reported lawsuit over injuries from a batted baseball was filed during the first decade of the 20th century. A man watching a horse race at an Iowa agricultural fair was hit by a foul ball from a baseball game being played on the track's infield. He sued the directors of the fair; in 1907 the state's Supreme Court held that the directors were not liable since their organization's purpose was to promote agriculture and the baseball game was not part of that, thus they could not be expected to have knowledge of the risks it posed and there was no nonfeasance.
The following year, Michigan's Supreme Court took judicial notice, in a case brought by a patron injured by a foul ball from a nearby game while dancing at a resort, of the inherent risks of watching a baseball game and that every spectator assumed them by choosing to watch:
Establishment of the Baseball Rule
Crane v. Kansas City Baseball & Exhibition Co.
In 1913, an appellate court for the first time heard a case against a baseball team arising from a foul ball injury incurred by a paying spectator at the game.Baseball Rule, at 71 Three years earlier, Samuel Crane had gone to a home game of the Kansas City Blues, an American Association class AA minor league team, at Association Park in Kansas City, Missouri. At the ticket counter, he had the choice of a seat in the bleachers, beyond the outfield fence, for 25¢ ($ in today's dollars) or in the grandstand, next to the infield, for twice that price. In either area, all seats were general admission; Crane could sit wherever he wanted if a space was available.