Well, I had yesterday off so I didn't get to read the paper but today the front page article was about a 39 year old man from CT who sued a softball manufacturing company, Louisville Slugger, and his home town for a total of like 1.3 million dollars because during a baseball game he was pitching and the batter used a Louisville Slugger metal bat and the ball went right back at him and hit him in the eye. He sued saying the bat was too techonologically advaned for softball and that the softball was too hard and that the pitchers mound was two inches too close to the plate. I'll try to find the article.

 

Poosie h:

 

On a September evening six years ago, under the lights at Niantic's Bride Brook Park, John Santos slow-pitched a softball that came back at him so fast he had no time to react.

The ball shot off Dan Stepanian's aluminum Louisville Slugger bat and smacked Santos in the right eye, pushing the eye back into the socket, severing the iris and shattering his cheekbone. The 39-year-old auto-body shop owner has since regained some of his vision, but he has never returned to the East Lyme Men's Softball League.

Santos has successfully sued three parties in the aftermath of the accident: the maker of the bat, the maker of the softball and the Town of East Lyme.

Reached by telephone this week, he said he didn't want to talk about it.

“It's been going on for six years,” Santos said. “I just want to be done.”

But Santos' attorney, Ralph J. Monaco of New London, said “hot” metal alloy bats, engineered for high performance and without warning labels, are a public safety issue. He said Santos' case also involved a softball that was too hard and a pitcher's mound that was too close to home plate.

The main culprit, according to Monaco, was Kentucky-based Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the Louisville Slugger Advanced Player TPS bat that Stepanian took to the plate that night. The company settled a product-liability lawsuit on the second day of a jury trial in New London Superior Court last month.

Monaco had claimed the bat's thin metal wall allowed the ball to “trampoline” off the bat and that the bat was end-weighted to deliver too much force when it struck the ball. The settlement amount is confidential, but Monaco said he insisted on being able to speak publicly about the dangers of today's high-performance bats.

“Most people on the ball field just do not understand that balls can be hit at speeds that exceed human reaction time,” Monaco said. “The problem is that bat technology has advanced well beyond human capability. What makes it worse is that the manufacturer did not provide any written literature or warning with this bat.”

Worth Sports, the maker of the Super Blue Dot Softball, settled with Santos for about $70,500. Monaco said that claim was over the ball's hardness, which at 72 degrees is 525 pounds per quarter inch (PQI). It was colder on the night Santos was injured –– in the 50s –– and the ball could have been almost as hard as a golf ball, about 725 PQI, Monaco said.

The town's insurance carrier agreed to pay $27,500 because the pitcher's rubber, which is supposed to be at least 50 feet from home plate, was two inches closer than it should have been, Monaco said. Also, the town ordered a harder softball than the one that had been requested by the league, he said.

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Stepanian, the batter, was playing for Workout World on Sept. 25, 2000. His team had an 11-run lead over its opponent, Guy's Oil. Stepanian said he swung at Santos' pitch with the intent of hitting a home run and invoking the league's “mercy rule,” under which the game ends when one team gets ahead by at least 12 runs.

“Basically I was swinging for the fence,” said Stepanian, a 32-year-old table game dealer/supervisor at Mohegan Sun.

“I swung. I hit the ball,” he said. “It went straight for him. He started raising his hand to try to catch it and tipped it off his glove and (the ball) hit his eye. The ball deflected past the third baseman.”

Stepanian said he ran to first base and that umpires called for time out.

Santos lay on the ground, bleeding. Somebody called an ambulance, and the game ended. Stepanian, who did not know Santos before the incident, cooperated with his lawsuit, turning the bat over to Monaco, the attorney, and testifying at the trial.

“As long as he didn't sue me, I don't care,” Stepanian said. “I'm glad he got something, I guess.”

Stepanian said he bought his black-and-gold Louisville Slugger bat in an online clearance sale. He said it was an older model and was obsolete even at the time. He liked it when it first came out in 1996, but was not impressed with it in 2000. He hardly remembered whether that was the bat he was using that night, Stepanian said, but he obliged Monaco, who had the Louisville Slugger cut in half and tested.

Stepanian, who has since moved out of East Lyme and joined a different softball league, owns several metal bats and said many players have sizeable collections of them.

With the alloy bats, “The ball goes a lot farther and a lot faster,” he said.

An attorney and a spokesman for Hillerich & Bradsby, which settled Santos' suit at the recommendation of its insurance company, said they could not comment because of the confidentiality agreement. The Louisville, Ky., company, in business since 1884, makes the wooden bats used by major league baseball teams as well as the metal alloy bats that have become so popular –– and so controversial –– in scholastic and hometown leagues.

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Monaco also is representing the Bennett family of Etters, Pa., whose 15-year-old son Robbie, a pitcher, lost an eye when he was struck by a ball hit by a “hot” metal bat in the Pennsylvania Keystone Games in July 2001.

Robbie's father, Donald Bennett, said he had looked down at his camera and did not actually see the accident happen.

“I heard it and I knew it was something bad,” Bennett said during a brief phone interview this week. He said his son's eyeball ruptured and that he underwent several surgeries, the last of which was to fit him with a prosthetic eye. Bennett hesitated to go into detail about the lawsuit, but said there is plenty of evidence to prove the excessive danger of metal bats.

In the Santos suit in New London, Monaco said he had been prepared to call a former engineer for the bat manufacturer as a witness. Jack Mackay of Mount Pleasant, Texas, worked for Hillerich & Bradsby from 1989 to 1998 and made some of the revolutionary changes in bat design that have influenced the industry.

“When he started testing these bats, he realized they were unsafe,” Monaco said. “He started to speak up about it to upper management.”

The test for product liability in Connecticut is whether the danger is beyond the expectation of the consumer, according to Monaco. He said he told the jury the metal-bat issue is analogous to that of the Ford Pinto, a model produced in the 1970s that could explode when struck in the rear, where the gas tank was located.

“We all expect we might get into an accident, but we don't expect the car is going to blow up if we get rear-ended,” he said.

Carol Rossiter, program coordinator for East Lyme Parks and Recreation, said the men's softball league plays under Amateur Softball Association rules, which allow metal-alloy bats.

“The bat that was used that night was an ASA bat,” she said. “The ball was a legal ball.”

Though there has been a lot of talk about bats and safety, Rossiter said the league has not changed any rules as a result of the accident. She said the players sign a waiver at the beginning of the season and are aware that they could be injured.

Pitchers are particularly vulnerable in slow-pitch softball. Monaco said one of his experts testified that the ball could come back to them at speeds approaching 100 mph, making them “sitting ducks” for injuries.

“It is a vulnerable position,” Rossiter said. “If you watch a lot of these games, they tend to hit the balls up the middle, and if the pitcher doesn't move or he's not quick enough, he can get hit. It can come off the bat fast.”







CLIFFS: Man gets hit by softball. Sue's softball manufacturer, Louisville Slugger, and his hometown saying ball was too hard, bat too techonologically advanced, and pitcher's mound too close to home plate.

 

someone should hit him in the head again.

 

Hahahaha that's the best story ever.

 

Must be Conneticutans.

 

There's another story about a woman sueing the city of Waterford for slipping on urine in an elevator at an appartment complex.

 

Hahahhaa, did she land in the urine? hahahahha wned:

 

i hope he wins.