Litigation and College Athletics
Every year, millions of people spend hours of their free time engrossed in sports. Whether it is college athletics, professional baseball or football, NASCAR, the Olympics or even little league, America’s pastimes have come to center around the pursuit of excellence in the sporting arena. Sports have become so important to Americans that Congress has taken time to investigate steroid drug use in professional sports and the Olympics. Even President-elect Obama has shown his passion for college football in saying that “I’m going to throw my weight around a bit” in calling for a national playoff system. John Ward, Obama to Push for College Football Playoff, Washington Times, Nov. 17, 2008,
With the increasing focus on sports, especially at the collegiate level, colleges and universities are seeing an increase in litigation from their current and former athletes. This is an area of interest in legal circles as it invokes a variety of legal issues especially for those athletes attending school under an athletic scholarship. Of utmost concern, though, is whether a legal duty of care is owed to the athlete by the team physicians and athletic trainers.
In order to establish a cause of action for negligence, a plaintiff first and foremost must show there was a duty of care owed by the defendant to the plaintiff. There have been few cases reported as to the existence of a duty of care between team physicians and the athlete and fewer which establish a legal precedent concerning the parties’ obligations to one another. Mitten, Team Physicians and Competitive Athletes: Allocating Legal Responsibility For Athletic Injuries, 55 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 129 (1993).
In Kleinknecht v. Gettysburg College, 989 F.2d 1360 (3rd Cir. 1993) a twenty year old lacrosse player suffered a heart attack and died during fall training. The court, in Kleinknecht, found that the college did have a duty of care to its athletes as a result of the special relationship created between the college and the athlete when the college recruited the person play to for its team. The court further elaborated its holding by detailing that the athlete was, in fact, not acting on his own behalf at the time of his death, but rather he was participating in a practice session, sanctioned by the college and manned by college personnel. The Kleinknecht opinion did not, however, create an enhanced duty of care, but rather simply stated that the special relationship between an athlete and his or her college imposes a reasonable duty of care on school.
Furthermore, the Kleinknecht opinion relies heavily on the active recruitment of the athlete to play for the college. It is, however, yet to be determined if an athlete who has a “walk-on” position with a college athletic team should be extended the same duty of care. The court did not describe this special relationship as emanating from a contractual obligation, and therefore, an argument could be made that even an athlete who was not recruited is still owed the same duty of care when participating in a college sanctioned practice with college personnel present.
Simply finding that a duty of care exists is but the first step in determining whether the college or university acted negligently, but it is an important first step. Because the case law is sparse, it is fair to say that a national standard has not been created, which might specifically define a duty of care owed by all colleges and universities to their athletes. However, the Kleinknecht case suggests that Pennsylvania state law imposes such a duty.
Collegiate athletics are a business for the college or university, especially in the area of football and basketball. The revenues created provide the financing for the coaches and administrators salaries, the facilities, the equipment and many of the other non-revenue producing sports. The substantial monetary stream must be maintained, but needs to be done so with the athletes’ best interest as the central focus. The imposition of this duty of care serves to highlight the special nature of the mutually beneficial relationship found between colleges and athletes
