I’m not a racing fan but I think everyone knows about the crash over the weekend and the injuries that resulted. On the back of every ticket was this disclaimer.
Is this enough to protect them?
The maxim is that disclaimers are worth the paper they are printed upon. That said, the doctrine of assumption of risk will apply.
The argument will likely be made that the raceway did not reasonably protect from risk in this instance.
For a side factor, non-attendees impacted by injury to an attendee certainly did not waive any of their rights.
Baseball has mostly escaped using the assumption of risk disclaimer for decades, seems like it would apply here as well.
IANAL, but if I recall correctly, there was some legal loophole attached to the fact that you could buy “protected” seats if you chose, which would be luxury boxes at at baseball stadium, where you would be protected from balls flying into the stands. If you didn’t pony up the $$ for luxury seats, then you took your chances.
Racetracks have luxury suites, yes? Seems like a precedent.
Maybe. I would suggest it would be a reasonable conclusion to draw that most people don’t go to the racetrack expecting to get hit by flying racecar debris.
Further, say the flying debris actually killed someone in the stands. The doctrine is, “Sucks to be you.”
I just don’t see that as a viable defense. Not to mention the PR nightmare it would be.
Maybe this will help clear things up (from Cornell.edu)
So it would seem that by and large there is no longer any legitimate doctrine as such (been a while since I was in law school as you can see) and that the general concept has been subsumed under the rubric of contributory negligence.
But does that really play in a situation like this?
Even if it has been a while since you were in law school, you must recall that a dissenting opnion has no value as controlling law.
You say “by and large there is no longer any legitimate doctrine as such” but nothing you have posted supports such a claim.
For what it’s worth, there is an announcement at the beginning of NHL games about the dangers of high speed pucks coming off the ice. I’ve only heard of one actual death, however.
^ Yes, and when that happened, they started putting up nets at both ends of the ice to help prevent it.
Back to the legal argument, people don’t go to a racetrack with the expectation they are going to get hurt or killed.
This isn’t the first massive wreck that NASCAR has dealt with. So they know what to expect when a massive accident happens, yet they still only put up chain link fence around the track.
You can argue that’s willful negligence.
Of course, none of this would ever get to court. A settlement would be reached far beforehand. NASCAR wouldn’t want every single thing about them shown to the world in a discovery motion.
A crash like this happens every few years. I tried googling for lawsuits involving injured fans and only see articles announcing lawsuits. I have not seen what the results were.
If you think that the fence around the track is “only a chain link fence”, you are mistaken. That fence is engineered to keep two tons traveling 200 mph from entering the stands.
Me
Considering the substantial ill will Daytona and NASCAR would face, er, make that “loss of revenue”, if they resisted the victims in court, it is very likely less expensive as well as simply decent to cover any uninsured medical bills and give them some pampering.
Until it doesn’t. For many years, the ski industry in Vermont operated on the “assumption of risk” principle, and the courts upheld it. Until, one day, a court disallowed it. The legislature passed a bill protecting ski areas against similar suits quite quickly.
“That fence is engineered to keep two tons traveling 200 mph from entering the stands.”
…
Tell that to the 12 or so injured people at Daytona on Saturday.
You mean the ones who aren’t dead because the fence wasn’t a token chain link?
What are you on about?
Your initial contention was the protection was a simple chain link. Obviously it was not and the fencing offered at least some measure of injury mitigation. It was obviously not enough to prevent ALL injury, but it’s also clear it helped prevent worse injury.
You can debate whether or not it was sufficient protection and can debate how much legal or moral obligation NASCAR is under (as clearly the thread is about), but it’s a poor tactic to throw out clearly wrong claims and then try to weasel out of it by invoking emotion (oh no! injured people) rather than addressing your original weak and false argument.
IIRC (IANAL) One point is the negligence issue. If you are propelling yourself down a hill on a mountain and you slip and fall on your skis at 30mph, there is a risk that you could hurt yourself. You knew this when you took up skiing. Mountains are irelgular, and the terrain may suddenly dip, etc.
OTOH, you expect when you get onto a ski lift that the pulley wheels will not fall of and hit you in the head. If they do, odds are it’s because someone did not inspect or maintain the lift properly - likely negligence. It’s hard to write a disclaimer, “I may be a dangerous moron but that’s your tough luck!”
Daytona probably lies somewhere in between. Like hockey rinks, they put up protective barriers - so they know there’s a risk. The audience knows there are protective barriers and expects a diminished risk. The key question will then be - why did the protection not do its job? Was the crash at the outside edge of forseeable, or was the barrier improperly constructed? Could this particular danger have easily been protected by proper crafting of the protection barrier? That’s why we have lawyers and expert witnesses…
To be clear I was only following Cornell’s lead. Not only have I been out of law school a long time but I changed careers a couple of times after that as well.
This sounds like the type of weighing and balancing approach a court would take. Although there are still some absolutes in the law, they’re few and far between and people seldom realize that many times just because something appears in a printed legal document, that does not equate with it being enforceable as written.
Race fans are not oblivious to the fact that debris can come over or through the fence. It often does, but it small enough pieces that it does not inflict serious damage. This is one reason why seats in the lower rows are more expensive than those higher up; you assume more risk in return for paying less.
In this particular case, the most serious injuries were due to a tire with some attached suspension going over the top of the fence. Tires going over the fence is usually the cause behind spectator injuries at modern racetracks. Seven spectators at US racetracks have been killed since 1987 by loose wheels during Indycar races.
Fences have been raised and strengthened and that has worked well. The vehicles have intentionally been throttled back with the specific intent of keeping them inside the track. But you still have a 200+ mph vehicle to deal with. A NASCAR stock car weighs 3500 pounds and it’s remarkable that the fences protect so well. In Saturdays incident, the complete front end was torn off the car. The engine came to rest just on the other side of the concrete wall.
I believe that Daytona Motor Speedway and NASCAR are adequately protected from lawsuits but that they will initiate a payout as a goodwill gesture.
Below is the list of the 10 worst accidents involving spectators. The most recent was 1977. None occurred in the US. The motorsports sanctioning bodies are all aware that racing could be banned by a country or jurisdiction if there was a large death toll from an accident. Switzerland outlawed auto racing following the 1955 LeMans accident, and General Motors “officially” pulled out of motorsports from 1956 to 1973 for the same reason.
- Le Mans 1955 - 82 and possibly 18 who died later.
- European GP, Monza 1928 - 22 or 27
- Mille Miglia 1957 - 10 or 18
- Gorkij, Soviet Union 1948 - 14. A record attempt with an Auto Union.
- Italian GP 1961 - 13 or 14
- Grenzlandring 1952 - 13
- Tourist Trophy, Ards 1936 - 8
- Lourenco Margques, Mozambique 1977 - 7 or 8
- Shah Alam, Malaysia 1977 - 6 children
- San Remo GP 1951 - “Several people”
What about liability, and liability insurance?
Presumably, the race track operator has liability insurance to cover these kind of things. If they successfully defend against liability suits, then it’s (mostly) the insurance company that doesn’t have to pay. If they are found liable, the it’s (mostly) the insurance company that pays. So it’s really the insurance company that has the incentive to defend against suits. Isn’t this the usual way things happen in liability cases?
If they have contract provisions that supposedly shield the race track from this kind of liability, or if there are laws that do that (like those ski laws mentioned above), then why have liability insurance at all? What is liability insurance for, anyway? “Just in case” the contract or laws don’t work?
Uh… I assume the track does carry insurance, no?
While spectators may not expect to get hit by flying car parts many do hope to see a crash.
I can help you with one such lawsuit from here in Las Vegas.
[
](Las Vegas News | Breaking News & Headlines | Las Vegas Review-Journal)
The result of the lawsuit? [She lost.
](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695271688/Court-favors-ballparks-in-foul-ball-case.html?pg=all)