Lightening/Lawyers & Liability

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Our local league has been offered a lightening alert system by a donor (about a $3,500 first class system). Our attorney (board member) states that the system will increase our liability in two ways. The first if it fails to work and lightening strikes and the second if it does work and teams, umpires, parents or kids fail to heed it.

He emphatically recommends that we do not accept it.

 

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Unfortunately, your lawyer friend is correct on this subject to the best of my knowledge. While I don’t think it makes any common sense at all, our legal system again shows why many of us believe the inmates are running the asylum.

On the same train of thought, the defibulator to shock people back to life is another life-saving item that could put you and/or the club in jeopardy. If you have one and a person would become incapacitated to the point they needed the difibulator to be shocked back to life, there needs to be a qualified person there to use it or you could be sued either way. You are liable if you use it improperly and you are liable if you have a machine and nobody is available to use it.

How screwed up is that!

 

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So disable all anti-lock brakes, seat belts, and pitch safety glasses at work. Oh yeah, run red lights too since they all prevent some form of injury upon others.

Please add to this list of things we should ignore safety wise. And yeah, don't forget to remove the filters on your smokes.

 

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The state of Ohio has Good Samaritan laws that protect a person with proper intentions from being liable in the case of an emergency. If your intentions are to try to help someone in extreme situations you are most likely protected.

The courts will not hold you liable if you pull someone from a burning vehicle even though you may injure them more by doing so because you saved that life. The defibrillators are almost complete automatic, they tell you when they are set correctly on the patient, they analyze the heart rhythm and condition, they set amount of shock, all you do is push the button when it lights up. Let's not scare people here.

You could be held liable if you have this equipment and don't maintain it to the point where it fails or is inoperable. Then you provided a false sense of security to the general public and didn't carry through with your responsibility.

You also can not be held accountable for other people's decisions. If the lightning detector goes off and people don't heed it when they've been informed of the danger, you can't be responsible. Any umpire should stop the game and direct the teams to pause playing. They can't play without the ump. As long as the umps follow the rules, that should never be an issue and if the ump ignores them, then it's on him or her.

Are we that paranoid as a society?

 

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The state of Ohio has Good Samaritan laws that protect a person with proper intentions from being liable in the case of an emergency. If your intentions are to try to help someone in extreme situations you are most likely protected.

The good Samaritan law does have various caveats and is not as cut & dry as you make it sound. You are protected as long as you act within your knowledge and training. If you perform CPR on someone and break a rib that punctures their lung and you have never had formal CPR training, guess what you're screwed if they choose to sue you. Now, if you are the only person around you're safe, if others were around and you did not ask them if they were trained, you're screwed.

If someone is conscious and you do not ask & get their permission to help them, your screwed.

I spent months getting First responder certified and all the legalese was enough to make you not want to help anyone.

 

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The3dm:

Agreed, I was trying to keep it simple.

I believe in the school of thought that if you're out on the field and lightning is flashing away and you stay on the field, well then maybe you should get struck by lightning. "Stupid is what stupid does".

 

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I ALWAYS ask the parents and usually both teams are represented in the crowd.. to watch for lightning of ANY kind. Distant or close .. doesn't matter.

When one of those parents see lightning.. this game is hereby suspended and off we go.

It's a game and not life.... but I think what bothers me the aboslute most ... is when I take the girls off and others don't because it is "still a ways off yet" and my thoughts go to ... "did they not see the lightning" ?

Until one event, when I pulled my field of girls off about ten minutes before the storm actually hit because of a parent seeing lightning.

About five minutes later I heard this 70 plus grandma just "belittling" this home plate umpire to the point I am sure he was wanting to crawl up inside himself and hide...LOL... about the girls STILL being on the field.

The other fields just seem to come to a complete stop ( as I think the fear of "grandma" came into their thoughts ).


It's up to ALL participants in a softball game to "step-up" to the plate for the safety of these girls.

You see lightning...... ABSOLUTELY say something IMMEDIATELY. As lightning in the distance can, within a split second, be lightning upon top of ALL of us ... placing ALL in harms way.

If the system would have been in place.. it would have went off on the lightning that happened across the horizon.. so sirens would have went off...

So, why would ANYONE, umpire or parent alike, not get the girls to safety?

It is JUST a game.. It's is NOT life !!!

 

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Our legal system has gone haywire in the last 40 years when it comes to tort law. I argue that our legal system is somewhat haywire altogether. The problem is that we started to try to create utopia, where no accidents are permitted to happen and some notion of perfect process is required.

Any accident is presumed to be someone's fault and someone must pay. In the process leading up to trial, the discovery phase can drag on for years, as the legal system tries to make sure that every fact and every theory under the sun is accommodated. And at trial, common sense is often tossed out the door in favor of arcane rules of evidence.

The legal system is designed to drag things out and to encourage lawsuits to be filed. It is no conspiracy, it's just what is naturally going to happen when lawyers (like myself) are mostly the ones writing the rules. In this quest for utopian justice, what gets ignored are the huge costs upon society.

The main cost is monetary, as we all spend untold thousands of dollars taking measures to avoid being sued, many of those measures offering no extra safety or any other good. Another cost that is not as obvious is the decision to not allow people to do things, simply for fear of being sued. For example, at our camp last summer, we had a couple of people question my decision to bring out the Slip N Slide, because someone could get hurt (and we certainly can't have that in 2011) and we might get sued. We used it anyway. But there are so many fun and worthwhile activities that people are no longer permitted to do because of our legal system (and overbearing do-gooders), and that cost is not even factored into the decisions made by that system. The legal system's inflexibility and the media's overplay of the oddball case (McDonald's coffee) causes schools and other institutions to be probably twice as cautious as needed, thereby further placing the clamps on our activities. Remember when a school would not be terrified of people using a field or a gym? Nowadays, if an outside group wants to use our softball field, the amount of paperwork is insane. They have to be a non-profit organization, they must have ample insurance, safety procedures must be in place, and on and on and on. This is not the society in which I want to live. We need more judges to tell people that they assumed the risk.

 

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The good Samaritan law does have various caveats and is not as cut & dry as you make it sound. You are protected as long as you act within your knowledge and training. If you perform CPR on someone and break a rib that punctures their lung and you have never had formal CPR training, guess what you're screwed if they choose to sue you. Now, if you are the only person around you're safe, if others were around and you did not ask them if they were trained, you're screwed.

If someone is conscious and you do not ask & get their permission to help them, your screwed.

I spent months getting First responder certified and all the legalese was enough to make you not want to help anyone.

It's rather rude when reality hits.... most people that see a fight really try to end it... let me throw this tid-bit out there... say you decide to break up a fight.... and the "other" party is guilty as can be.... Butler County has an interesting POV on how to address this.... lets say the other guy is the guilty party and everyone on the planet knows the other guy is guilty including the police at the scene, to get "off-setting" charges and to get the "guilty person" off the hook you can simply claim "assault" on the person(s) that broke up the fight and the police can come and pick all named up. Or should I say arrest you and put you in jail. So, that Good Samaritan law may be out there, but it's not before you go to court. So.... my recommendation is to never break up a fight. Just saying... this is reality in Butler County and let's say I know someone that has had this happen to them.

 

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I'd like to hijack this thread for a minute. So as a parent, what do you do when you see the lightning, know that there is lightning, and the coaches and umpires decide that the game is going to continue. At what point do you take the initiative, walk down and tell the dd to get their stuff together and that we are heading to the car for safety?

 

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I'd like to hijack this thread for a minute. So as a parent, what do you do when you see the lightning, know that there is lightning, and the coaches and umpires decide that the game is going to continue. At what point do you take the initiative, walk down and tell the dd to get their stuff together and that we are heading to the car for safety?

Mention it to the coach you just saw lightning and say it loud enough the ump can hear it. Should be good enough to stop the game right then. Lightning safety is a big point of emphasis for umps.

 

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Mention it to the coach you just saw lightning and say it loud enough the ump can hear it. Should be good enough to stop the game right then. Lightning safety is a big point of emphasis for umps.

Better be Number 1 priority. Believe me, I have seen TD's want to play on, blah, blah, blah and ALL their excuses to do so.

"Well play on.. just without me" is usually my answer. Parents and kids usually join me in leaving the field at this point in time.

Tusk: Do what you have to do.. Bottom line is three things : 1) kids , 2) lightning, and 3) safety. I know what you are saying... Some coaches are "out there in center-right field" on this subject on when to end the game in lightning.

 

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By no means am I a lawyer, but you might want to check to see if you put a hold harmless clause into the league/tourmament agreement if that would protect the club from the club's liability. Also, you might want to check with your lawyer/insurance carrier to see if the officers/directors of the club are being protected adequately from personal liability if something were to go wrong, not just from the system failing, but from the various liabilities that can arise. Hope this helps out!!

 

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I know at NSA Worlds "B" they had a lightening monitoring system. And the rules were spelled out at the coaches meeting on what was to happen if the siren went off. There was no decision making. We all left the fields and I mean leave your chit and get to the parking lot and your cars. And then I think we had 10 minutes after the all clear siren went off to be back at our field.

 

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Thanks folks! Safety is number 1 but every once in a while there are forces that want to try and get games in even when they know that they should stop. We all want to see the games and get every game in that is possible but sometimes the smart move is getting out of there. I'm hoping that I never get put into the position of having to pull dd off the field or out of the dugout in this manner but I will do what I have to do. Man is it going to be unpopular and ugly. Thanks for the info

 

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Just for the record it's lightning and not lightening. Always has to be one dick in the crowd to point something like that out and I figured it was my turn. hehehe

 

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More and more parks are installing these. I feel it is a good idea. You have liability if someone at your park stubs their toe and wants to sue.