Basketball Anyone - Recklessness and Sports Injury Cases: Dotzler v. Tuttle

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|Participants in a contact sport assume certain known risks of injury. Judge Cardozo succinctly summed up this concept when he said, "[T]he timorous may stay at home." Although the participants assume the risks of ordinary injuries resulting from such things as being tackled in a football game, being kicked in a soccer game, or colliding while playing basketball, players do not assume the risk of an injury caused by another player's intentional violation of a known safety rule.|Intentionally violating a safety rule is the essential element of "recklessness" in the context of a contact sport as defined by the Restatement (Second) of Torts. The Restatement definition of recklessness was adopted by the Nebraska Supreme Court as the standard for sports injury cases in Dotzler v. Tuttle. In adopting the recklessness standard, the Nebraska court followed the landmark Illinois case, Nabozny v. Barnhill, and its progeny...