WAYNE, N.J. (AP) — The family of a boy who suffered brain damage after he was struck by a line drive off an aluminum baseball bat sued the bat's maker and others on Monday, saying they should have known it was dangerous.Now, this is a tragic event, tragic because a child suffered a serious injury, but also tragic because there was a sporting event held with children participating and no adult there seemed to know CPR.
The family of Steven Domalewski, who was 12 when he was struck by the ball in 2006, filed the lawsuit in state Superior Court. It names Hillerich & Bradsby Co., maker of the 31-inch, 19-ounce Louisville Slugger TPX Platinum bat used when Steven was hit.
The lawsuit also names Little League Baseball and Sports Authority, which sold the bat. It claims the defendants knew, or should have known, that the bat was dangerous for children to use, according to the family's attorney, Ernest Fronzuto.
Steven was pitching in a Police Athletic League game when he was hit just above the heart by a line drive. His heart stopped beating and his brain was deprived of oxygen for 15 to 20 minutes, according to his doctors.
But what it says to me is that any "pain and suffering" can be used to link any two events. Now, Steven threw the ball, starting this whole cycle, and after the ball was hit, he was unable to catch the ball or deflect it from hitting him or get out of the way. Now, I'm not trying to be a hard-ass, but up to that one pitch, it seemed to be okay with his parents whenever Steven pitched to any other batter who faced their son using an aluminum bat.
So, again, up to the point of injury, Steven's parents thought aluminum bats were safe enough to let their son stand fifty feet away and throw a baseball at another kid who was swinging one.
But what does this have to do with the privatization of libraries? As long as libraries are public institutions, there seems to be the generally accepted belief that libraries are not liable for any injury caused by the reading of books or the sharing of ideas. So a lawsuit like this one shows me that there will be a point when a private library, run by a corporation, will be blamed for some future event. For example, if a parent plans for her child to grow up to become a doctor, but the child decides to become anything but a doctor because he saw it in a book, the library will be sued for lost wages. If someone gets fat because the recipes in a cookbook were irresistible, the library will be sued. If a child throws a baseball and another child hits it back with an unabridged dictionary hard enough to cause injury, the library will be sued. Library card paper cuts: sued; Adam Sandler movies: sued; gay penguin picture books: sued; Harry Potter turning your daughter into a Wiccan: sued; not enough parking spaces: sued; no cell phone use: sued; too many cell phone users: sued; Internet computer mouse slimy: sued; Internet too slow: sued; Internet down: double-sued.
Now I know this is America, and everyone is free to sue anyone for any damn thing they want, and that lawyers of the spawn of Hell, but how many more lawsuits does this country need?
"People who have children in youth sports are excited about the lawsuit from a public policy standpoint because they hope it can make the sport safer," Fronzuto said after filing the suit Monday morning. "There are also those who are skeptical of the lawsuit and don't see the connection between Steven's injury and the aluminum bat."One of those skeptics is right here. Now all you parents with a kid involved in organized sports, go now and learn CPR, or lock your kid in his room. Oh, I forgot, it's America; do nothing now and sue everyone later.
And as someone who played baseball as a kid and pitched, one of reasons teams uses aluminum bats was because wood bats would break. I don't know what your experience is, but I was much less terrified of a ball being hit back at me from an aluminum bat than I was of a wood bat cracking in half and sending a one-pound chunk of jagged wood at me at 35 mph.
