A state appeals panel has ruled a woman who was hit in the face by a foul ball at Chicago’s Wrigley Field can continue her personal injury lawsuit against Major League Baseball, because, the court ruled, using a ticket to enter ballpark doesn’t mean she agreed to a contract under which she would waive her rights to sue MLB or the Chicago Cubs over her injuries.
On March 16, a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court in Chicago ruled against MLB and the Cubs in a dispute over whether notices printed on a baseball ticket were enough to allow MLB to force to arbitration the personal injury claims of plaintiff Laiah Zuniga.
Zuniga had sued MLB in 2020, two years after she was struck in the face by a foul ball at Wrigley Field during a Cubs home game in late August 2018. According to the decision, she was struck while she was eating a sandwich, and sustained facial fractures, among other injuries. She spent four days in the hospital for treatment, according to the documents.
Tracy Brammeier
| Clifford Law Offices
According to court documents, she was at the game that day as a gift from her father, who had won tickets at a raffle at his workplace. He had received traditional paper tickets, and she had used one of those tickets to enter the ballpark that day.
After Zuniga filed suit, MLB and the Cubs responded to the lawsuit by arguing she had no legal right to sue. Rather, they said, contract terms that apply to every ticket require those in attendance at MLB games to submit all injury claims to an arbitrator, not a judge or jury in a court of law.
MLB noted the ticket included language advising ticket holders that their use of the ticket was considered agreement to be bound to certain user contract terms. Language on the back of the ticket in fine print then directed users to access the full customer terms and conditions on the Chicago Cubs’ website.
The back of the ticket, however, also included language warning users of the risks posed by foul balls, specifically that “baseballs might be hit into the stands, that spectators should stay alert, and that the Cubs and other entities would not be liable for resulting injuries.”
Further, the back of the ticket included language advising ticket holders that any disputes over legal claims against MLB or the Cubs that arise from their attendance at Wrigley Field “shall be resolved by binding arbitration … in Chicago, Illinois.”
In Cook County court, however, Zuniga’s lawyers argued those arbitration provisions should not apply to her case. They argued the warnings and arbitration requirements were printed in type that was far too small to be noticed by ordinary ticket holders. Further, they argued it was too “onerous” to expect ordinary ticket holders “to notice the website address on the ticket and then use a device with Internet access to find and read the full text of the terms and conditions.”
Cook County Circuit Judge Kathy Flanagan sided with Zuniga, ruling that the terms and conditions included with the ticket were “unconscionable” and, thus, enforceable.
That prompted MLB and the Cubs to appeal.
Appellate justices, however, also reached the same conclusion.
The appellate opinion was authored by Justice James Fitzgerald Smith. Justices Terrence Lavin and Aurelia Pucinski concurred.
The justices ruled that the language printed on the ticket concerning the terms and conditions, and arbitration, was enough to allow MLB or the Cubs to enforce any contract agreement against Zuniga or any other ticket holder.
They said they did not believe anyone should be considered to have signed a contract simply by entering a stadium. There must be “knowledge of and assent to the terms and conditions of a contract” to declare someone has “signed” a contract.
They noted Zuniga was never required to sign anything, or even click a button online to indicate her agreement with the terms and conditions, before entering the ballpark.
The justices said they believed the Cubs and MLB “overreached” in attempting to impose such an alleged agreement in this situation.
“The overreaching is the fact that the Cubs sought to bind the plaintiff, merely through her use of a baseball ticket to enter Wrigley Field, to an extensive eight-paragraph arbitration provision that was not provided to her, which she could read only by either accessing the Cubs’s website (while likely being in the commotion outside the baseball stadium when she recognizes the need to do this, where it is not necessarily easy or practical to read an Internet website) or by visiting the Cubs’s administrative office (despite her ticket containing no information about where that office could be found),” Justice Fitzgerald Smith wrote.
The justices said they are not concluding that the Cubs or other sports teams or arena owners cannot impose terms and conditions on ticket holders, including terms compelling arbitration for disputes.
Rather, they said, the Cubs – and potentially others – will need to find other ways to do so.
“There may be ways in which the Cubs can have all persons using tickets contractually agree to binding arbitration as a term of condition of entry into the stadium, but the way in which it was done in this case is procedurally unconscionable,” Fitzgerald Smith wrote.
Zuniga has been represented by attorney Tracy A. Brammeier, of the Clifford Law Offices, of Chicago.
MLB and the Cubs have been represented by attorneys Rami Fakhouri and Brian Karalunas, of Goldman Ismail Tomaselli Brennan & Baum LLP, of Chicago; and R. Adam Lauridsen, Sarah Salomon, and Andrew S. Bruns, of Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, of San Francisco.