The American Museum of Tort Law will host an exciting virtual panel on February 15 at 1pm EST on the topic of ongoing foul ball safety risks to fans throughout professional baseball. The event is free, and will appeal to high school and law school students, in addition to the general public. Register at tortsmuseum.org or directly on Zoom for Sports & Torts: Foul Ball!
Moderated by Ken Reed, the panel will include attorney Greg Wilkowski, who is representing a plaintiff in an active foul ball injury lawsuit in Illinois, and advocate Jordan Skopp, the founder of Foul Ball Safety Now!.
“We know about two young fans who were critically injured by foul balls in minor league baseball in 2023, and another fan who was blinded by a foul ball at an MLB game last summer.
Those are just the incidents that we are aware of; there are likely many others out there who were injured recently, and we hope they’ll come forward. It is clear that fans remain at extreme risk of death and serious injury, and much more needs to be done by regulators and the legal community to correct these problems now,” Skopp says.
Jordan Skopp is a realtor, philanthropist and life-time baseball fan from Brooklyn, New York.
Foul Ball Safety Now is working to eliminate the Baseball Rule, adopted decades ago by courts and a handful of state legislatures, which holds that fans injured by high-speed foul balls cannot receive compensation in court, no matter how badly they are hurt, so long as the home team has taken minimal steps to protect spectators.
Skopp’s efforts have received national news coverage, as well as international press in Korea and Japan. He is the author of a forthcoming book about foul ball fan safety.
“Elected officials and regulatory agencies need to intervene to protect fans from dangerous foul balls before the gates open this Spring, not next year,” according to Skopp.
ESPN produced a compelling segment in 2019 on the severity of this problem, and it’s an eye-opening video to watch to understand this issue and learn why Major League Baseball ought to mandate protections for fans throughout baseball.
The presentation will be followed by a live Q&A with the speakers and the Zoom attendees. All attendees will be able to submit their questions during the webinar and will have the opportunity to ask their questions live (time permitting).
Possible discussion topics on the panel may include:
– What is the Baseball Rule? What’s the rationale? What’s the argument against it?
– What’s happening in 2024 with legal challenges put forward to hold baseball accountable?
– Have baseball players shared these concerns with their own family members?
– How do the injured and their family members feel about baseball’s continued failure to protect fans?
About Foul Ball Safety Now
Foul Ball Safety Now! is a campaign started by Jordan Skopp, a Brooklyn realtor, lifelong baseball fan, and author of a forthcoming book about the wildly overlooked scandal in the professional baseball industry – the all-too-frequent incidence of fans being maimed by dangerous foul balls due to the lack of extended protective netting, and related failures to educate fans about their assumed risk at the ballgame. For more information, visit Foul Ball Safety Now https://www.foulballsafetynow.com/
