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I think the problem with the child’s mindset is made glaringly clear when he says that the real problem isn’t the coaches, but the fact that there aren’t enough rules for the coaches to follow.

One wonders if it’s willful ignorance or the more simple kind that makes him think that the best way to impose more rules on people he thinks should have them is by litigation rather than supporting some sort of legislation. He’s been corrupted by watching lawless successes by the trial bar for too long. If you can’t get congress or your state house to pass the law you want… well… there’s probably a judge somewhere that’s a big enough sucker to circumvent the whole process and get you what you want anyway. Plus attorneys’ fees.

I don’t know that it’s unusual for a school to be considered in loco parentis for purposes of protecting a minor from harm. If a high-school football player demanded to continue playing after a concussion, is it unreasonable to find that his coaches have a duty of care that obliges them to override his wishes in the interest of his health? The pitch-count theory seems like a grayer area, particularly since they were within the league guidelines, but it strikes me that a coach should have some consciousness of the risks of blowing out his pitchers’ arms.

Would a public school have governmental immunity from a negligence suit, though?

Thanks for the heads up on the article, I wrote a blog post about it today:

http://www.marylandlawyerblog.com/2008/04/lawsuit_over_pitch_counts.html

This player injured his arm through overuse. But what if a player is injured because he uses incorrect technique? Is the coach negligent if he didn’t teach a kid to throw the ball properly, or failed to correct a player who has bad technique?

I’ve seen coaches yell at pitchers because they are using incorrect technique. They say “stop throwing it like that, you’ll injure your arm.” But they leave them in the game.

I coach youth soccer and baseball, I think I’m going to jack up my umbrella insurance policy limits.

This player injured his arm through overuse.

That is his assertion. Yet as a baseball coach, you know that you can do the same type of damage by throwing with poor mechanics. So who is really to say whether the kid hurt his arm by over use or poor mechanics?

If he didn’t listen to his coach and was throwing with the wrong motion, that would be his fault – just like not coming out of the game would have been his fault. As you cannot sue yourself, it makes more “sense” to sue the coach, the school, and the school board. They must be at fault.

The odd thing is that I do believe that there are more injuries due to the mechanics used today. To “old school” way of letting the follow through take you over your bent front knee (ala Tom Seaver) has been replaced by a stiff front knee, which makes the arm more of a whip than an arm. No wonder there are more arm injuries today than there were in years past.

As an aside, an umpires list I belong to was talking today about being sued for not following the rules of the game or whatever. Most of the umpires said they wouldn’t umpire a game with 8 or less people as it is against most codes and if a kid got injured, they could get sued. A lawyer in the group said that in the last ten years, he could not find a case where an umpire was sued for an injury to a player in instances like that, but yet the threat of litigation chills umpires from doing what we did as kids growing up – playing ball whenever and wherever.

Just the threat of a lawsuit – real or imagined – has a long reaching effect.