A Montana jury has found the manufacturer of Louisville Slugger bats to be liable for damages because of an alleged failure to put adequate warnings on the product to notify the public regarding its dangers.
Hillerich and Bradsby has been ordered to pay $850,000 to the family of 18-year-old Brandon Patch. The teenager was killed during a 2003 baseball game after being struck in the head by a batted ball off an aluminum bat while pitching during an American Legion game in Helena, MT.
The Patch family argued aluminum bats are dangerous because they cause the ball to travel faster than those hit off wooden bats. They said Brandon did not have enough time to react after the ball was hit...
The company has issued a response based on logic and sanity:
Our company did nothing wrong. We made a bat in accordance with the rules. That bat was approved for play by baseball's organizing and governing organizations. In fact, the jury found in our favor, that the bat was not defective.
However, the verdict that our company "failed to adequately warn of the dangers of the bat" has left us puzzled. It seems contradictory for the jury to say the bat is not defective but our company failed to warn that it could be dangerous. It appears to be an indictment of the entire sport of baseball. Anyone who has ever played the game, or any sport for that matter, understands there are risks inherent in baseball and the object is to use a bat, whether wood or aluminum, to hit the ball hard. Unfortunately, this verdict seems to be a statement on the society we live in today, that everything must have a warning label...
It's worth noting that one reason Little Leagues switched from wooden bats to aluminum ones was the risks posed by the splinters of broken wooden bats. And what if there had been a warning on the bat - would the kid not have been a pitcher?Reddit thread here, with about 500 comments.
Photos: screencaps from The Shining.
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