Opinion ID: 2575823
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Duty of Care Owed College Athletes

Text: The District asserted as an alternate basis for demurrer that it owed Avila no duty of care. To recover for negligence, Avila must demonstrate, inter alia, that the District breached a duty of care it owed him. Generally, each person has a duty to exercise reasonable care in the circumstances and is liable to those injured by the failure to do so. ( Rowland v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108, 112, 70 Cal.Rptr. 97, 443 P.2d 561.) By statute, the Legislature has extended this common law standard of tort liability to public employees (§ 820, subd. (a); Hoff v. Vacaville Unified School Dist. (1998) 19 Cal.4th 925, 932, 80 Cal.Rptr.2d 811, 968 P.2d 52) and has extended liability for public employees' negligent acts to public entity defendants (§ 815.2, subd. (a); Hoff, at p. 932, 80 Cal.Rptr.2d 811, 968 P.2d 522). The existence of `[d]uty is not an immutable fact of nature `but only an expression of the sum total of those considerations of policy which lead the law to say that the particular plaintiff is entitled to protection.'' ( Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co. (1997) 15 Cal.4th 456, 472, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 291, 936 P.2d 70.) Thus, the existence and scope of a defendant's duty is an issue of law, to be decided by a court, not a jury. ( Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist. (2003) 31 Cal.4th 990, 1004, 4 Cal.Rptr.3d 103, 75 P.3d 30.) When the injury is to a sporting participant, the considerations of policy and the question of duty necessarily become intertwined with the question of assumption of risk. The traditional version of the assumption of risk doctrine required proof that the plaintiff voluntarily accepted a specific known and appreciated risk. ( Prescott v. Ralph's Grocery Co. (1954) 42 Cal.2d 158, 161-162, 265 P.2d 904, citing Rest., Torts, § 893.) The doctrine depended on the actual subjective knowledge of the given plaintiff ( Shahinian v. McCormick (1963) 59 Cal.2d 554, 567, 30 Cal.Rptr. 521, 381 P.2d 377) and, where the elements were met, was an absolute defense to liability for injuries arising from the known risk ( Quinn v. Recreation Park Assn. (1935) 3 Cal.2d 725, 731, 46 P.2d 144). California's abandonment of the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of comparative negligence ( Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, 119 Cal.Rptr. 858, 532 P.2d 1226) led to a reconceptualization of the assumption of risk. In Knight v. Jewett (1992) 3 Cal.4th 296, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696 ( Knight ), a plurality of this court explained that there are in fact two species of assumption of risk: primary and secondary. ( Id. at pp. 308-309, 11 Cal. Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696 (plur. opn. of George, J.).) Primary assumption of the risk arises when, as a matter of law and policy, a defendant owes no duty to protect a plaintiff from particular harms. ( Ibid. ) [6] Applied in the sporting context, it precludes liability for injuries arising from those risks deemed inherent in a sport; as a matter of law, others have no legal duty to eliminate those risks or otherwise protect a sports participant from them. ( Id. at pp. 315-316, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696.) Under this duty approach, a court need not ask what risks a particular plaintiff subjectively knew of and chose to encounter, but instead must evaluate the fundamental nature of the sport and the defendant's role in or relationship to that sport in order to determine whether the defendant owes a duty to protect a plaintiff from the particular risk of harm. ( Id. at pp. 313, 315-317, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696.) A majority of this court has since embraced the Knight approach. ( Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 1004-1005, 4 Cal.Rptr.3d 103, 75 P.3d 30; Cheong v. Antablin (1997) 16 Cal.4th 1063, 1067-1068, 68 Cal.Rptr.2d 859, 946 P.2d 817.) Here, the host school's role is a mixed one: its players are coparticipants, its coaches and managers have supervisorial authority over the conduct of the game, and other representatives of the school are responsible for the condition of the playing facility. We have previously established that coparticipants have a duty not to act recklessly, outside the bounds of the sport ( Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 318-321, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696), and coaches and instructors have a duty not to increase the risks inherent in sports participation ( Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 1005-1006, 4 Cal.Rptr.3d 103, 75 P.3d 30); we also have noted in dicta that those responsible for maintaining athletic facilities have a similar duty not to increase the inherent risks, albeit in the context of businesses selling recreational opportunities ( Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co., supra, 15 Cal.4th at p. 482, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 291, 936 P.2d 70 [collecting cases]). In contrast, those with no relation to the sport have no such duty. ( Id. at pp. 482-483, 63 Cal.Rptr.2d 291, 936 P.2d 70 [garbage truck operator has no duty not to increase risks inherent in horseback riding].) In interscholastic and intercollegiate competition, the host school is not a disinterested, uninvolved party vis-à-vis the athletes it invites to compete on its grounds. Without a visiting team, there can be no competition. Intercollegiate competition allows a school to, on the smallest scale, offer its students the benefits of athletic participation and, on the largest scale, reap the economic and marketing benefits that derive from maintenance of a major sports program. [7] These benefits justify removing a host school from the broad class of those with no connection to a sporting contest and no duty to the participants. In light of those benefits, we hold that in interscholastic and intercollegiate competition, the host school and its agents owe a duty to home and visiting players alike to, at a minimum, not increase the risks inherent in the sport. Schools and universities are already vicariously liable for breaches by the coaches they employ, who owe a duty to their own athletes not to increase the risks of sports participation. ( Kahn v. East Side Union High School Dist., supra, 31 Cal.4th at pp. 1005-1006, 4 Cal.Rptr.3d 103, 75 P.3d 30.) No reason appears to conclude intercollegiate athletics will be harmed by making visiting players, necessary coparticipants in any game, additional beneficiaries of the limited duty not to increase the risks of participation. Thus, we disagree with the Court of Appeal dissent, which argued that the District is little more than a passive provider of facilities and therefore should have no obligation to visiting players. The District relies on cases establishing that colleges and universities owe no general duty to their students to ensure their welfare. ( Crow v. State of California, supra, 222 Cal.App.3d at p. 209, 271 Cal. Rptr. 349; Baldwin v. Zoradi, supra, 123 Cal.App.3d at pp. 287-291, 176 Cal.Rptr. 809.) We have no quarrel with these cases. Nor do we have occasion to decide what duties a college or university might owe in the context of intra collegiate competition, as with the intramural competition at issue in Ochoa, supra, 72 Cal. App.4th 1300, 85 Cal.Rptr.2d 768, also relied upon by the District. The duty of a host school to its own and visiting players in school-supervised athletic events is an exception to the general absence of duty, an exception plainly warranted by the relationship of the host school to all the student participants in the competitions it sponsors.
We consider next whether Avila has alleged facts supporting breach of the duty not to enhance the inherent risks of his sport. Though it numbers them differently, Avila's complaint in essence alleges four ways in which the District breached a duty to Avila: by (1) conducting the game at all; (2) failing to control the Citrus College pitcher; (3) failing to provide umpires to supervise and control the game; and (4) failing to provide medical care. [8] The District's demurrer was properly sustained if, and only if, each of these alleged breaches, assumed to be true, falls outside any duty owed by the District and within the inherent risks of the sport assumed by Avila. With respect to the first of these, conducting the game, Avila cites unspecified community college baseball rules prohibiting preseason games. But the only consequence of the District's hosting the game was that it exposed Avila, who chose to participate, to the ordinary inherent risks of the sport of baseball. Nothing about the bare fact of the District's hosting the game enhanced those ordinary risks, so its doing so, whether or not in violation of the alleged rules, does not constitute a breach of its duty not to enhance the ordinary risks of baseball. Nor did the District owe any separate duty to Avila not to host the game. The second alleged breach, the failure to supervise and control the Citrus College pitcher, is barred by primary assumption of the risk. Being hit by a pitch is an inherent risk of baseball. ( Balthazor v. Little League Baseball, Inc. (1998) 62 Cal.App.4th 47, 51-52, 72 Cal.Rptr.2d 337; see also Mann v. Nutrilite, Inc. (1955) 136 Cal.App.2d 729, 734, 289 P.2d 282 [same re being hit by thrown ball].) The dangers of being hit by a pitch, often thrown at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour, are apparent and well known: being hit can result in serious injury or, on rare tragic occasions, death. [9] Being intentionally hit is likewise an inherent risk of the sport, so accepted by custom that a pitch intentionally thrown at a batter has its own terminology: brushback, beanball, chin music. In turn, those pitchers notorious for throwing at hitters are headhunters. Pitchers intentionally throw at batters to disrupt a batter's timing or back him away from home plate, to retaliate after a teammate has been hit, or to punish a batter for having hit a home run. (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game (2000) pp. 205-239.) Some of the most respected baseball managers and pitchers have openly discussed the fundamental place throwing at batters has in their sport. In George Will's study of the game, Men at Work, one-time Oakland Athletics and current St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa details the strategic importance of ordering selective intentional throwing at opposing batters, principally to retaliate for one's own players being hit. (Will, Men at Work (1990) pp. 61-64.) As Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale and New York Giants All Star pitcher Sal The Barber Maglie have explained, intentionally throwing at batters can also be an integral part of pitching tactics, a tool to help get batters out by upsetting their frame of mind. [10] Drysdale and Maglie are not alone; past and future Hall of Famers, from Early Wynn and Bob Gibson to Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, have relied on the actual or threatened willingness to throw at batters to aid their pitching. (See, e.g., Kahn, The Head Game, at pp. 223-224; Yankees Aced by Red Sox, L.A. Times (May 31, 2001) p. D7 [relating Martinez's assertion that he would even throw at Babe Ruth].) While these examples relate principally to professional baseball, [t]here is nothing legally significant . . . about the level of play in this case. ( West v. Sundown Little League of Stockton, Inc. (2002) 96 Cal. App.4th 351, 359-360, 116 Cal.Rptr.2d 849; see Balthazor v. Little League Baseball, Inc., supra, 62 Cal.App.4th at pp. 51-52, 72 Cal.Rptr.2d 337; Mann v. Nutrilite, Inc., supra, 136 Cal.App.2d at p. 734, 289 P.2d 282.) The laws of physics that make a thrown baseball dangerous and the strategic benefits that arise from disrupting a batter's timing are only minimally dependent on the skill level of the participants, and we see no reason to distinguish between collegiate and professional baseball in applying primary assumption of the risk. It is true that intentionally throwing at a batter is forbidden by the rules of baseball. (See, e.g., Off. Rules of Major League Baseball, rule 8.02(d); National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 2006 NCAA Baseball Rules (Dec.2005) rule 5, § 16(d), p. 62.) But even when a participant's conduct violates a rule of the game and may subject the violator to internal sanctions prescribed by the sport itself, imposition of legal liability for such conduct might well alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule. ( Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 318-319, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696.) It is one thing for an umpire to punish a pitcher who hits a batter by ejecting him from the game, or for a league to suspend the pitcher; it is quite another for tort law to chill any pitcher from throwing inside, i.e., close to the batter's body  a permissible and essential part of the sport  for fear of a suit over an errant pitch. For better or worse, being intentionally thrown at is a fundamental part and inherent risk of the sport of baseball. [11] It is not the function of tort law to police such conduct. In Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at page 320, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696, we acknowledged that an athlete does not assume the risk of a coparticipant's intentional or reckless conduct totally outside the range of the ordinary activity involved in the sport. Here, even if the Citrus College pitcher intentionally threw at Avila, his conduct did not fall outside the range of ordinary activity involved in the sport. The District owed no duty to Avila to prevent the Citrus College pitcher from hitting batters, even intentionally. Consequently, the doctrine of primary assumption of the risk bars any claim predicated on the allegation that the Citrus College pitcher negligently or intentionally threw at Avila. [12] The dissent suggests primary assumption of the risk should not extend to an intentional tort such as battery and that Avila should have been granted leave to amend to allege a proper battery claim. (Conc. & dis. opn. post, 41 Cal.Rptr.3d at pp. 317-319, 131 P.3d at pp. 398-402.) Amendment would have been futile. Absence of consent is an element of battery. ( Barouh v. Haberman (1994) 26 Cal. App.4th 40, 45-46, 31 Cal.Rptr.2d 259.) One who enters into a sport, game or contest may be taken to consent to physical contacts consistent with the understood rules of the game. (Prosser & Keeton, Torts (5th ed.1984) § 18, p. 114; see also Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at p. 311, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696 [It may be accurate to suggest that an individual who voluntarily engages in a dangerous activity `consents to' or `agrees to assume' the risks inherent in the activity]; Ritchie-Gamester v. City of Berkley (1999) 461 Mich. 73, 597 N.W.2d 517, 524 [The act of stepping onto the field may be described as `consent to the inherent risks of the activity'].) Thus, the boxer who steps into the ring consents to his opponent's jabs; the football player who steps onto the gridiron consents to his opponent's hard tackle; the hockey goalie who takes the ice consents to face his opponent's slapshots; and, here, the baseball player who steps to the plate consents to the possibility the opposing pitcher may throw near or at him. The complaint establishes Avila voluntarily participated in the baseball game; as such, his consent would bar any battery claim as a matter of law. The third way in which Avila alleges the District breached its duty of care, by failing to provide umpires, likewise did not increase the risks inherent in the game. Baseball may be played with umpires, as between professionals at the World Series, or without, as between children in the sandlot. Avila argues that providing umpires would have made the game safer, because an umpire might have issued a warning and threatened ejections after the first batter was hit. Whatever the likelihood of this happening and the difficulty of showing causation, the argument overlooks a key point. The District owed a duty not to increase the risks inherent in the sport, not a duty to decrease the risks. ( Balthazor v. Little League Baseball, Inc., supra, 62 Cal. App.4th at p. 52, 72 Cal.Rptr.2d 337; accord, West v. Sundown Little League of Stockton, Inc., supra, 96 Cal.App.4th at p. 359, 116 Cal.Rptr.2d 849.) While the provision of umpires might  might  have reduced the risk of a retaliatory beanball, Avila has alleged no facts supporting imposition of a duty on the District to reduce that risk. Finally, Avila alleges that the District breached a duty to him by failing to provide medical care after he was injured. Relying on Brooks v. E.J. Willig Truck Transportation Co. (1953) 40 Cal.2d 669, 255 P.2d 802 ( Brooks ), he argues that because the District placed him in peril through the actions of the Citrus College pitcher, it had a duty to ensure he received medical attention. In some circumstances, the common law imposes a duty on those who injure others to mitigate the resulting harm. Under the Restatement Second of Torts, section 322, an actor who knows or has reason to know that by his conduct, whether tortious or innocent, he has caused such bodily harm to another as to make him helpless and in danger of further harm . . . is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent such further harm. In Brooks, we recognized and applied this principle, holding in the context of a hit-and-run death that [o]ne who negligently injures another and renders him helpless is bound to use reasonable care to prevent any further harm which the actor realizes or should realize threatens the injured person. ( Brooks, supra, 40 Cal.2d at pp. 678-679, 255 P.2d 802.) Avila's proposed extension of Brooks to this case encounters at least three main difficulties. First, Avila has not alleged a basis on which to conclude the District caused his injury. Universities ordinarily are not vicariously liable for the actions of their student-athletes during competition. ( Townsend v. State of California (1987) 191 Cal.App.3d 1530, 1536-1537, 237 Cal.Rptr. 146 [university not vicariously liable for actions of its basketball player]; see also Fox v. Board of Supervisors (La.1991) 576 So.2d 978, 982-983 [no vicarious liability for actions of rugby club]; Kavanagh v. Trustees of Boston University (2003) 440 Mass. 195, 795 N.E.2d 1170, 1174-1176 [no vicarious liability for actions of basketball player]; Hanson v. Kynast (1986) 24 Ohio St.3d 171, 494 N.E.2d 1091, 1096 [no vicarious liability for actions of lacrosse player].) While Avila argues the District should be responsible for the Citrus College pitcher's conduct if the Citrus College coaches ordered or condoned a retaliatory pitch, the complaint notably lacks any allegation they did so. Second, even if Avila might have amended his complaint to add such an allegation, Brooks and the common law duty it recognizes are confined to situations where the injured party is helpless. The complaint establishes that Avila was able to make it to first and then second base under his own power, and was able to alert his own first base coach to his condition. These allegations cast serious doubt on whether Avila was sufficiently helpless so as to warrant imposing a Brooks /Restatement Second of Torts, section 322-type duty on the District. Third, even if we were to impose a duty, the face of the complaint establishes that Avila's own Rio Hondo coaches and trainers were present. They, not Citrus College's coaches, had exclusive authority to determine whether Avila needed to be removed from the game for a pinch runner in order to receive medical attention. [13] Likewise, to the extent Avila argues a Citrus College-provided umpire could have insisted Avila receive medical treatment, there is no basis for concluding a home team umpire would have been authorized to overrule the medical judgments of Rio Hondo's trainers. Thus, even if the District were responsible for causing Avila's injury, at most it would have had a duty to ensure that Avila's coaches and trainers were aware he had been injured so they could decide how best to attend to him. The complaint indicates Avila alerted his own first base coach to how he was feeling, and when he arrived at second base, a Citrus College player, recognizing Avila was injured, alerted the Rio Hondo bench, at which point Rio Hondo removed Avila from the game. If the District had a duty, it satisfied that duty. In the possibly apocryphal words of New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, It ain't over till it's over, but this means that for Avila's complaint against Citrus College, it's over.