The Baltimore Orioles, a professional baseball team, visited Boston’s Fenway Par
ID: 2713992 • Letter: T
Question
The Baltimore Orioles, a professional baseball team, visited Boston’s Fenway Park to play the Boston Red Sox, another professional baseball team. Ross Grimsley was a picture for the visiting Baltimore club. During one period of the game, Grimsley was warming up in the bullpen, throwing pitches to a catcher. During this warm up, Boston spectators in the stands heckled Grimsley. After Grimsley had completed warming up, Grimsley wound up as if he were going to throw the ball in his hand at the plate but then turned and threw the ball at one of the hecklers in the stand. The ball traveled at about 80 miles an hour, passed through a wire fence protecting spectators, missed the heckler that Grimsley was aiming at, and hit another spectator, David Manning, Jr., causing injury. Manning sued Grimsley and the Baltimore Orioles. Are the defendants liable? Fully explain your answ
Explanation / Answer
Answer:No , the defendants are not liable.
Wyzansky, Senior District Judge. We, unlike the district judge, are of the view that for the evidence that Grimsley was an expert pitcher, that on several occasions immediately following heckling he looked directly at the hecklers, not just into the stands, and that the ball traveled at a right angle to the direction in which he had been pitching and in the direction of the hecklers, the jury could reasonably have inferred that Grimsley intended (1) to throw the ball in the direction of the hecklers, (2) to cause them imminent apprehension of being hit, and (3) to respond to conduct presently affecting his ability to warm up and, if the opportunity came, to play in the game itself. The foregoing evidence and inferences would have permitted a jury to conclude that Grimsley committed a battery against Manning. This case falls within the scope of Restatement (second) of Torts section 13 (1965) which provides:
An actor is subject to liability to another for battery if
a. he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a third person, or an imminent apprehension of such a contact , and
b. a harmful contact with the person of the other directly or indirectly results.
Although we have not found any Massachusetts case which directly supports that aspect of section 143 at issue in this case, we have no doubt that it would be followed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Section 13 has common law roots that precede the American Revolution. The whole rule and especially that aspect of the rule which permits recovery by a person who was not a target of the wrong doer embody a strong social policy including obedience to the criminal law by imposing an absolute civil liability to anyone who is physically injured as a result of an intentional harmful contact or a threat there of directed either at him or a third person.
http://www.csun.edu/sites/default/files/Ahart_280%20F15.pdf
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