Brown v. San Francisco Ball Club

• Decision Date: 19 September 1950
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: BROWN v. SAN FRANCISCO BALL CLUB, Inc. Civ. 14191.

Page 19

222 P.2d 19

99 Cal.App.2d 484

BROWN v. SAN FRANCISCO BALL CLUB, Inc.

Civ. 14191.

District Court of Appeal, First District, Division 1, California.

Sept. 19, 1950.

Edward D. Mabson, San Francisco, for appellant.

S. A. Ladar, Jesse H. Steinhart, and John J. Goldberg, all of San Francisco, for respondents.

FRED B. WOOD, Justice.

This is an appeal by plaintiff from a judgment entered upon a directed verdict for the defendant in an action against San Francisco Ball Club, Inc., for damages for personal injuries sustained while attending a professional baseball game at Seals' Stadium, San Francisco.

The appeal is also from an order denying plaintiff's motion for new trial. That phase of the appeal should be dismissed, for such an order is not appealable.

Appellant, a woman of 46 years, attended the game as the guest of friends, one of whom furnished and purchased the tickets which were for seats in an unscreened portion of the stadium near the first-base line. The game was in progress when they arrived and about an hour later the accident occurred while the players were changing sides. Appellant was struck by some object and sustained serious injury. Evidence is lacking whether or not it was a baseball, or from what direction it came. However, the motion for directed verdict appears to have been made, and the issues discussed by the parties upon this appeal, upon the assumption that appellant was hit by a baseball, possibly thrown from second to first base, touching the first baseman's glove and passing thence into the stand.

Respondent owned and operated the stadium which had a seating capacity of 18,601, divided into screened and unscreened areas. Approximately 5,000 seats were behind a screen back of the home plate. The remainder were unscreened and in two sections behind the first-base and third-base lines respectively. Tickets for seats were sold at separate windows, one window for each of these three sections, each window marked for a particular section. Patrons decided where they would sit, and went to the appropriate window for their seats. It is generally true of all the games held in this stadium that a great majority of the patrons are situated in the unscreened sections, because they prefer an unobstructed view.

The attendance at this particular game was approximately 5,000. There were many vacant seats in each seating area. Most of the spectators were seated in the first-base and third-base unscreened sections, very few in the home-plate screened area.

For this game, held October 14, 1945, after the close of the Pacific Coast League season, respondent rented the stadium to others and had no control over the conduct of the game or the players; nor did it publicize the game or fix the admission price. Ticket sales at the stadium were handled by respondent's employees and the ushers who escorted patrons to their seats were its employees. The rental charged was a percentage of the gross receipts, not of the profits.

Accordingly, the duty of care, if any, which respondent owed to appellant was that of proprietor, toward a patron, of the stadium at which this game was played.

The applicable general principle is that the owner of property, insofar as an invitee is concerned, is not an insurer of safety but must use reasonable care to keep his premises in a reasonably safe condition and give warning of latent or concealed perils. He is not liable for injury to an invitee resulting from a danger which was obvious or should have been observed in the exercise of reasonable care. Shanley v. American Olive Co., 185 Cal. 552, 555, 197 P. 793; Mautino v. Sutter Hospital Ass'n, 211 Cal. 556, 560, 296 P. 76; Blodgett v. B. H. Dyas Co., 4 Cal.2d 511, 512, 50 P.2d 801; Dingman v. A. F. Mattock Co., 15 Cal.2d 622, 624, 104 P.2d 26. To the extent that the duty of self-protection rests upon the invitee, the duty of the invitor to protect is reduced. The extent of these relative duties depends upon many factors involving the capacity and opportunity of the invitor to protect the invitee and the capacity and opportunity of the invitee to protect himself.

In baseball, one of these factors is that the patron participates in the sport as a spectator and in so doing subjects himself to certain risks necessarily and usually incident to and inherent in the game; risks that are obvious and should be observed in the exercise of reasonable care. This does not mean that he assumes the risk of being injured by the proprietor's negligence but that by voluntarily entering into the sport as a spectator he knowingly accepts the reasonable risks and hazards inherent in and incident to the game.

The duty of the proprietor or operator of a baseball stadium toward his patrons is specifically defined, as follows: "With respect to the law governing cases of this kind, it has been generally held that one of the natural risks assumed by spectators attending professional games is that of being struck by batted of thrown balls that the management is not required, nor does it undertake to insure patrons against injury from such source. All that is required is the exercise of ordinary care to protect patrons against such injuries (Edling v. Kansas City Baseball, etc., Co., 181 Mo.App. 327, 168 S.W. 908), and, in doing so, the management is not obliged to screen all seats, because, as pointed out by the decisions, many patrons prefer to sit where their view is not obscured by a screen. Moreover, the management is not required to provide screened seats for all who may apply for them. The duty imposed by law is performed when screened seats are provided for as many as may be reasonably expected to call for them on any ordinary occasion (Wells v. Minneapolis Baseball, etc., Ass'n, 122 Minn. 327, 142 N.W. 706, 46 L.R.A.,N.S., 606, Ann.Cas.1914D, 922; Brisson v. Minneapolis Baseball, etc., Ass'n, 185 Minn. 507, 240 N.W. 903); and if as in the cases of Wells v. Minneapolis Baseball, etc., Ass'n, supra, and Kavafian v. Seattle Baseball Club Ass'n, 105 Wash. 215, 177 P. 776, 181 P. 679, a spectator chooses to occupy an unscreened seat, or, as in the Brisson Case, supra, is unable to secure a screened seat and consequently occupies one that is not protected, he assumes the risk of being struck by thrown or batted balls; and, if injured thereby, is precluded from recovering damages therefor. As aptly said in Cincinnati Baseball Club Co. v. Eno, 112 Ohio St. 175, 147 N.E. 86, it is common knowledge that in baseball games hard balls are thrown and batted with such great swiftness they are liable to be thrown or batted outside the lines of the diamond, and spectators occupying positions which may be reached by such balls assume the risk of injury therefrom." Quinn v. Recreation Park Ass'n, 3 Cal.2d 725, 729-730, 46 P.2d 144, 146.

It would seem necessarily to follow that respondent fully discharged its duty toward appellant, as concerns the risk to her of being hit by thrown or batted baseballs, when it provided screened seats for all who might reasonably be expected to request them, in fact many more screened seats than were requested. Hence, the injury suffered by her when struck by a thrown ball, while voluntarily occupying an unscreened seat, did not flow from, was not caused by, any failure of performance by respondent of any duty owed her, and did not give rise to a cause of action in her favor against respondent for damages for such injury.

Appellant seeks to take this case out of the application of the rule upon the theory that she was ignorant of the game of baseball and the attendant risks, hence cannot be said to have knowingly assumed the risk. The point is not well taken. Although she had a limited experience with baseball, she was a mature person in possession of her faculties with nothing about her to set her apart from other spectators and require of her a lower standard of self-protection from obvious, inherent risks than that required of other spectators. She was, at the time of the accident, 46 years of age; had lived in the San Francisco area since 1926; was about to go to a school for training and to have a job as saleswoman in a real estate office; had seen one baseball game prior to this, in 1928, played in a big field, not a ball park, when she observed the game from an automobile and did not see balls thrown or knocked into the crowd;...