Motion to Dismiss Louisville Slugger Verdict Denied
SportsOneSource Media
A motion by attorneys for Louisville Slugger to throw out a jury verdict that found them liable for a 2003 baseball player’s death has been denied by a district judge in Montana.
In the motion, Louisville Slugger argued that attorneys for the parents of Miles City baseball pitcher Brandon Patch failed to produce evidence that had a warning been given, Patch would have changed his actions to avoid injury, according to the Billings Gazette.
The American Legion baseball player died after he was struck by a ball that was hit by an aluminum bat. Patch’s parents sued the company in 2006. The suit went to trial in October. After 12 hours of deliberation, a jury sided with the Patches and awarded them $850,000. The jury ruled that while the bat was not defective in design, the ordinary user was not properly warned of its dangers.
In the ruling, District Judge Kathy Seeley dismissed arguments citing a prior case in which the person was injured but not killed. Testimony in the trial gave evidence that Patch would follow guidelines and rules and therefore would have altered his actions if a warning had been given, Seeley ruled.
“The Court has not been able to locate any Montana cases that are analogous to the case at bar with respect to the failure to warn involving a deceased plaintiff, and the parties have cited none,” the order stated.
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In May of 2009, I was doing a research project on aluminum versus wooden bats and found it to be a hot topic pinning local governments, bat companies, and the USA Baseball Youth Commission. USA Baseball came out with a position paper (http://tinyurl.com/USA-Baseball-Statement) on behalf of the AABC, AAU, NABF, USSSA and T-Ball USA.
Read my post on the link above and see what you think. Whatever the case may be, this is going to be a long battle that will set the precedent to many of the lawsuits around the country.
Having played little league baseball, we always understood the dangers of aluminum bats and the speed at which the ball explodes off the bat, but in my humble opinion, I don’t see why we would eliminate the aluminum bat completely from youth baseball.
