Upon being injured in his first rugby game, Jim Smith decided to sue his university for negligence. He believed that the school did not provide him with proper medical attention upon suffering a concussion during his game. Negligence can be defined as “failing to do something that a reasonable, prudent, and up-to-date person would have done under the same/similar conditions or doing something that a reasonable, prudent and up-to-date person would not have done” (Dougherty, Goldberger, & Carpenter, 2007, p. 187). Despite these acts being unintentional, one can seek compensation from the courts under tort law. For a tort lawsuit to be successful, it must have all four elements of negligence: duty, breach of duty, proximate cause, and loss. The …show more content…
The cause of the injury must have been foreseeable and a result of the breach of duty. An injury can be described as foreseeable if a reasonable person could have been able to predict it happening given the circumstances. Any sensible person would know that contact sports can to lead to various types of injuries. Regardless of these injuries being minor or major, medical personnel should be around sporting events to assess and treat said injuries. Jim was injured during the first half of the game, since there was no one there to assess his injuries he proceeded to play until he was physically unable to. Given medical personnel being on hand, he would have been assessed on the spot and given the medical attention he needed. Because any type of injury is foreseeable during contact sport and the lack of medical care on hand, there is a proximate cause for Jim’s injuries thus fulfilling the third element of …show more content…
Waivers are legally binding contracts which states that the coach or whoever else is in charge is not liable for any injuries. These hold up as defense in court, unless it is applied to gross negligence. Jim’s case files under gross negligence since the school made a “conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care, which is likely to cause foreseeable grave injury or harm to persons,” (“gross negligence,” 2008). The University made the conscious decision to not make sure that there was medical assistance at the rugby game, knowing that some type of injury was bound to occur. Despite the school committing gross negligence, the school still has the defense of assumption of risk. It means that an individual recognizes that an activity comes with certain inherent risks. Inherent risks are risks that “cannot be eliminated without fundamentally altering the very nature of the activity” (Dougherty et al., 2007, p. 190). Rugby by nature is a violent contact sport, where the players have almost no padding to protect them. The only way to remove some of the risk of it would change the sport entirely. Given that Jim voluntarily decided to participate, was aware of the nature of the sport & what risks went along with it, and that his injury possibly could have come from the inherent risk not the negligence, the
Players cannot return to the game or cannot return to practice until they have been cleared from the team doctor as well as a neurologist
Nurse Rodgers did not know the substantial risk of harm. She was uninformed and ill-trained when she analyzed the x-ray. Negligent about potential risks, she mistakenly did not perform a follow-up examination and promptly diagnosed Jones’ wrist as a sprain. She did, however, give him a brace. A brace that Emerson Jones did not wear on his own accord when he was playing basketball perfectly fine, as testified by Senior Guard Burgundy and Emerson Jones himself. It was for that reason that Nurse Rodgers’ negligently denied Emerson Jones medical
The movie Varsity Blues is riddled with sports related injuries. The audience is shown the dangers of playing while injured, as well as the consequences of the immense pressure put on student athletes. In almost all cases of injury in the movie, the treatment of these injuries is carried out entirely wrong. While watching the movie, the audience sees injuries ranging from torn ligaments and muscle strains to a broken nose, a concussion, and dehydration.
Avoidable injuries occur
Over the past decade, the increase in participation from recreational sporting activities to organized has increased significantly (Taniguchi, 2003). With more individuals taking part, the amount of injuries has escalated and the amount of negligent lawsuits soon followed. The courts have had to acclimate themselves and look at sporting injuries through the lens of tort law (Harvard Law Review, 2008). The landmark case in the state of California, Knight v. Jewett, the state supreme court upheld the original ruling that participants who knowingly cause injury to another contestant outside of the normal rules of conduct while participating in a sporting activity, are liable or negligent, changed the course how courts would rule in tort cases (Harvard Law Review, 2008). Hence, tort law is now a leading point of discussion in athletic and physical education departments in our local school districts (Taniguchi, 2003). Included in the discussion is intentional tort, when a player injuries another participant purposely (Wolohan, 2013). For intentional tort to be ruled on, three essentials must be present: 1.an injury must have occurred, 2. the cause of injury is due to a negligent act, 3. the act that caused the injury must be intentional (Wolohan, 2013). Thus, the merging of recreational activities, extreme sports, and physical education programs, intentional tort law will be looked at in the school setting.
Thus, wilful and wanton or reckless conduct allows the court to gauge what is and is not permissible conduct under the circumstances. Second, as the court recognized in Nabozny, courts must strike a balance between "the free and vigorous participation in sports" and the protection of the individual from reckless or intentional conduct. (Nabozny, 31 Ill.App.3d at 215, 334 N.E.2d 258.) Third, the court believed that applying an ordinary negligence standard would allow virtually every participant in a contact sport, injured by another during a "warm-up" or practice, to bring an action based on the risks inherent in virtually every contact