Court Opinion

ID: 9552271
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:07:42.189783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:01.202226
License: Public Domain

Hale, J.
(dissenting) — I dissent from the majority opinion because, when analyzed in minute detail, it seems to exonerate the school district of every conceivable duty toward spectators except the obligation to refrain from inflicting willful injuries. The majority’s ruling will make no distinction between the idly curious, informed football fan and the specially invited but uninitiated guest. The findings of fact, I am confident, bear me out on this proposition. I would, therefore, hold that the findings of fact do not support the conclusions of law, and, given the facts here, liability for plaintiff’s injuries should follow as a matter of law.
Here are the facts — all expressly found by the trial court — from which, in my view, the district’s liability seems established:
1. The game of football was “being conducted under the supervision of the defendant school district.”
2. “. . . [P]laintiff had been invited to attend the game by her grandson, Tom Winkle, a member of the West Seattle team ... to see him play in the game.”
3. “Tom . . . had been encouraged to invite his parents, relatives and friends to this and other games by programs at the West Seattle High School assemblies. . . . [T]he students were told [by the teacher-coach] *811that he would appreciate attendance of parents and relatives at such games.”
4. “Plaintiff . . . had attended only one other football game in her life. She was not familiar with the game of football; the only other game that she had attended had been several years previously at the high school memorial stadium where she sat in the grandstand.”
5. “The plaintiff was not requested to sit” in the bleachers across the field, which bleachers were “occupied solely by Garfield players who pile[d] their equipment on at least one-third of the bleacher seats. . . . There were no bleachers provided on what was considered the West Seattle side. . . . ”
6. Plaintiff went to stand on the West Seattle side “along with all the other spectators from West Seattle and with the knowledge and consent of the defendant school district employees supervising the game.”
7. “At the time the accident occurred, the plaintiff and her daughter were about a foot or two” outside the sidelines “and were standing at a place where they were supposed to he as far as the defendant and its supervisors were concerned; ...” (Italics mine.)
8. “The court finds that there was danger and hazard to spectators standing where the plaintiff stood when the play came her way unless such persons stepped away.”
9. Experts said, and the court agreed, that a distance of 5 yards outside the boundaries would have been a comparatively safe place for spectators to stand.
10. No players had run out of bounds in this game before the accident. Defendant could have required spectators to use the bleachers across the field or could have required the spectators to stand a safe distance from the playing field.
Given the foregoing facts, I must part company with the majority when it accepts the conclusions of law derived therefrom. Although I do agree with the trial court’s conclusion that the plaintiff was an invitee at the football game, I believe the facts fail to support the remaining conclusions of law:
*812“That plaintiff’s ignorance of the game of football is not a basis for holding defendant, Seattle School District No. 1, liable;” that the school district breached no duty owed to the plaintiff; “that it was not reasonably foreseeable to defendant that a risk of injury existed to a spectator in these circumstances.”
And I find no basis in fact for the other conclusions of law, exonerating the school district, as follows:
VI. That no negligence on the part of the defendant, Seattle School District No. 1, caused or contributed to the injuries in question.
VII. That negligence on the part of the plaintiff caused or contributed to the accident or the injuries in question.
VIII. That the plaintiff was of sufficient age, intelligence and experience to appreciate, and should have appreciated, the dangers involved in the game of football and that the plaintiff voluntarily assumed the risk of being injured by standing in close proximity to the sidelines.
The inconsistencies between the findings and conclusions seem quite clear, and would appear to call for conclusions of law quite the opposite of those drawn by the trial court.
Having found as a fact that players “frequently run or are knocked out of bounds,” and that the defendant was aware of this, how can it be concluded that it “was not reasonably foreseeable to defendant that a risk of injury existed to a spectator in these circumstances?” Without intending to labor the obvious, it would seem that this is the one type of injury that is clearly foreseeable — the one thing that, in the natural course of events, will likely occur.
The next inconsistency, between fact and conclusion, lies in the legal conclusion that plaintiff’s ignorance of the game of football is not a basis for liability. Having already found that plaintiff knew virtually nothing about football and that she had been especially invited by defendant to watch the game, how can the court logically conclude that she assumed the risk of or contributed to her injury in doing the very thing expected of her by defendant — stand along the sidelines among the spectators? *813The conclusions that plaintiff was both contributorially negligent and voluntarily assumed the risk by standing close to the sidelines relate to no facts showing appreciation of the hazards inhering in the situation, nor to acts or omissions showing want of ordinary care on the part of an uninformed, invited spectator. She stood where the district invited her to stand because it ignored its duty to instruct her otherwise.
I agree with the majority that Ingerson v. Shattuck School, 185 Minn. 16, 239 N.W. 667, is similar, but the reasoning of the dissenting opinion in that case seems more cogent and persuasive to me than that of the majority. I have little doubt that were the same case to come before that court today, the dissenting opinion would represent the prevailing view. I find in that case, however, several elements which distinguish it from the instant situation. There, although the court could well have imputed sufficient appreciation of the hazards to invoke the assumption of risk doctrine against her, it declined to do so, saying:
Mrs. Ingerson had attended three football games prior to this one. It is shown to be a more or less common occurrence for the football and for players to cross and go outside of the lines of the playing field. Prior to the accident, that had happened a few times in this game. Defendant contends that Mrs. Ingerson’s knowledge of the situation was such that she assumed the risk of any injury resulting. We do not so hold as a matter of law. (Italics mine.)
In the instant case, the trial court based its conclusions in part on assumption of risk with no evidence whatever of knowledge on the part of the plaintiff that she knew the players might crash into her at a place outside the playing field.
In Ingerson, supra, the court sustained á judgment for the defendant school solely because it found no negligence on the part of the district, and pointed out why the school could not be held negligent. It showed that the school had *814provided the plaintiff with a clear choice of places in which to sit.
Negligence is charged on the ground that defendant failed to provide safe and proper seats for spectators. It is sufficient to say that it is not shown that Mrs. Ingerson sought to obtain one of the seats provided or requested to be provided with a seat, or that she would not have had a seat in the bleachers if she had gone there for that purpose. Her son was the captain of the Mankato team and was seated on a bench away from the bleachers, and she went there to be with or near him.
In the present case, plaintiff was aware of no such choice and the district took no steps to make clear to her that such a choice was available. Plaintiff was not, as in Ingerson, supra, standing near the sidelines “to be with or near” her grandson, but stood there merely to watch the game along with the other spectators. Ingerson, supra, does not exonerate the school as a matter of law from all duties but, quite the contrary, implies a duty to warn uninitiated spectators when it says:
The defendant owed to plaintiffs the duty of exercising ordinary or reasonable care under the circumstances shown, the degree of care depending upon the situation shown.
Accordingly, in the instant case, where negligence is not charged on the ultimate failure to provide a safe place for spectators, but rather on the failure of the district to give notice to the plaintiff that she ought to stand a reasonably safe distance from the sidelines, she comes within the foregoing protective doctrine. I would conclude, therefore, that even under Ingerson v. Shattuck School, supra, plaintiff was entitled to some warning, notice, or signal from the school district to remain away from the immediate sidelines or to sit in the bleachers if the district is to be held to its duty of ordinary care for her. Had the evidence shown that the district had taken some steps in the discharge of its duty to exercise ordinary care, then the conclusions of law exonerating the defendant would be sound, but no such actions seem to have been taken.
*815Kavafian v. Seattle Baseball Club Ass’n, 105 Wash. 215, 177 Pac. 776, 181 Pac. 679 (1919), cited by the majority, not only puts the duty of reasonable and ordinary care on the defendant, but goes farther, I would say, in laying down a rule particularly appropriate to plaintiff’s case. After showing that the plaintiff understood the game of baseball and was “conscious of the fact that balls are very often hit ‘foul,’ ” and that “wild throws sometimes result in the ball falling among the spectators,” the decision turns on the pivotal fact that the plaintiff selected an unscreened and unprotected seat when seats behind a screened and protected area were readily available to him.
Deciding the case on the proposition that the defendant baseball club had exercised ordinary care as a matter of law in providing a readily accessible seat behind a screen, this court said of the plaintiff:
The place in which he could have taken a seat would have fully protected him against the ordinary and usual hazards . . . Having purchased a ticket which offered him a choice of two positions, he, with full knowledge of the risk of injury, chose the more dangerous position. (Italics mine.)
Where the defense of contributory negligence involves appreciation of the danger whence came the injury, or assumption of risk and volenti non fit injuria, together, separately, or in conjunction with that of contributory negligence, are urged as defenses, this court has held such defenses untenable unless there is substantial evidence to show that the plaintiff knew of and appreciated the dangers from which the injury came, or should, in the exercise of ordinary care, as a matter of law be charged with such knowledge and appreciation. Anderson v. Rohde, 46 Wn.2d 89, 278 P.2d 380; Kingwell v. Hart, 45 Wn.2d 401, 275 P.2d 431; Ewer v. Johnson, 44 Wn.2d 746, 270 P.2d 813; Walsh v. West Coast Coal Mines, Inc., 31 Wn.2d 396, 197 P.2d 233.
The trial court found as a fact that plaintiff “was not familiar with the game of football” and had “attended only one other football game in her life,” and that one *816several years previously at a stadium where she sat in the grandstand. Having no knowledge of football, and testifying categorically that she was unaware of any danger from the players, plaintiff said the idea of being run into by players as she stood with the other spectators never even occurred to her. Nor was any evidence presented to the contrary showing that she had knowledge or appreciation of such danger. Moreover, if she had no such knowledge before arriving at the game, she could not be said to have acquired it at the game, for the trial court, in finding that players in the game of football may run violently out of bounds, also found in this game that “No players had been run off the field before the accident.” Accordingly, it would seem the statement in Prosser, Torts § 67, pp. 459-60 (3d ed. 1964), that a spectator may be taken to assume all known risks from roller coasters, flying baseballs, golf balls, wrestlers, and such things as fireworks explosions, has little application to plaintiff’s predicament here because she neither knew of the danger nor had anything occurred earlier to charge her, in the exercise of reasonable prudence, with such knowledge.
Therefore, since plaintiff had no knowledge of the likelihood that the players might come charging into her if she stood within a few feet of the sidelines, she cannot be held either contributorially negligent, or to have assumed the risk of injury or consented to it by standing there (volenti non fit injuria) unless she, in the exercise of ordinary care for her own safety, may be charged with such knowledge as a matter of law. I would be loathe to declare it the rule of law in this country that a 67-year-old woman, having seen only one game of football in her lifetime, and that one from the distant security of a grandstand seat, and having no interest whatever in the game or the method of playing it, is held to understand that, without warning, the players may come running into her with great force at a place well outside the clearly marked playing field. Nor would I hold that same 67-year-old grandmother to possess as a matter of law the requisite peripheral visión, timing and agility to sidestep or other*817wise avoid the onrushing players. The facts, therefore, leave no basis for a conclusion of either contributory negligence, assumption of risk, or volenti non fit injuria.
On the question of defendant’s negligence, we have already seen that it owed a duty of ordinary and reasonable care to the plaintiff under the circumstances. Granted this duty, the facts show that defendant district took not a single step, significant or minor, to discharge its duty. It did nothing whatever to warn this plaintiff that she should stand a safe distance from the sidelines. Its agents — the coaches and officials — said nothing; they uttered no cautionary words nor did they direct the bystanders to sit in the bleachers; no ropes, lines, signs or other devices cautioned her to stand back, although any one of these devices could have been readily provided. I do not say which one or which method would meet the requirements of due care under the circumstances, but simply that the total absence of any warning, admonition or suggestion did constitute negligence proximately leading to plaintiff’s injury. Had the school district taken any precaution whatever, of whatever degree or formality, it would then have been the trier of the facts’ responsibility to ascertain if it met the standards of ordinary care under the circumstances. But the total absence of such precaution, the complete failure to do anything whatever to protect the plaintiff from a hazard well known to the defendant, I think, leads to the conclusion of negligence from the facts found.
I would, for these reasons, reverse and remand to hear the issue of damages solely.
Rosellini, C. J. and Hamilton, J., concur with Hale, J.
November 2, 1965. Petition for rehearing denied.