Idaho Supreme Court refuses to adopt "baseball rule"

The Idaho Supreme Court recently declined to adopt the so-called "baseball rule” which is commonly used to release baseball park operators from liability based on the notion that spectators assume the risk of being hit by foul balls. The court reached the correct result, but it could have done more to clarify what has become a confusing area of the law.
It is often said that spectators assume the risk of getting hit by foul balls at baseball games and that, thus, those in charge of the park do not have a duty to protect them.  Neither of the two parts of this statement is entirely correct. The problem is that the statement confuses the concept of duty – which is an element of the cause of action’s prima facie case – and assumption of the risk – which is an affirmative defense. The so–called “primary assumption of the risk” is simply another way of asking whether the defendant owes a duty to the plaintiff. 

When applied to baseball, the policy question should be answered the way the court in Idaho answered it.   An operator of a baseball stadium has a duty to protect the spectators sitting in the most dangerous part of the stadium and to exercise ordinary care to prevent unreasonable, foreseeable risks of harm to others.  This means that a defendant can’t claim a plaintiff assumed a risk created by the defendant’s own negligence.

This approach will yield good results not only in spectator injury cases but also in other sports cases.