Copyright 1998 ALM Media Properties, LLC
The Connecticut Law Tribune
February 23, 1998

SECTION: Pg. 5 Vol. 24
LENGTH: 410 words
HEADLINE: NEGLIGENCE ISN'T ENOUGH;
1997 Connecticut Supreme Court Year in Review;
Behind the Opinions
BYLINE: Colleen Bridget McGushin

BODY:

1997 Connecticut Supreme Court Year in Review

Behind the Opinions
Harry Kiernan loves soccer. So on a Sunday afternoon in May 1993, as part of a recreational coed league in South Windsor, two teams started a soccer game, and Kiernan was one of the players.

An independent computer consultant and part-time firefighter in Glastonbury, Kiernan, now 45, liked the workout and having the chance to see people he didn't have the time to get together with often. He's a sports enthusiast who received 10 varsity letters in soccer, football, track and baseball, to name a few, while a student at what was then known as Penny High School in East Hartford. He also played football during his four-year stint in the Navy, he says.

But something happened on that Saturday nearly five years ago. As Kiernan recalls it, there was a loose ball and both he and a player on the opposing team, Cynthia Jaworski, went for it. Their legs got tangled when they reached the ball and Jaworski injured her knee as a result, he adds. No foul was called, Kiernan says.

Jaworski subsequently sued Kiernan, and Kiernan was baffled by the whole thing. The case made it all the way to the state Supreme Court, and Kiernan's glad it did.

In a June 17, 1997, decision in Jaworski v. Kiernan, the court ruled 5-0 that a player in an athletic game isn't liable to a co-participant for injuries sustained as a result of simple negligence during a game. The normal expectations of participants in contact team sports include the potential for injuries resulting from conduct that violates the rules of the sport, wrote Chief Justice Robert J. Callahan. If simple negligence were adopted as the standard of care, every punter with whom contact is made, every midfielder high sticked, every basketball player fouled, every batter struck by a pitch, and every hockey player tripped would have the ingredients for a lawsuit if injury resulted.

As a result, Callahan, joined by Justices Robert I. Berdon, David M. Borden, Joette Katz and Francis M. McDonald Jr., concluded that the appropriate standard of care to adopt in cases involving team contact sport participants is a legal duty to refrain from reckless or intentional conduct.

Kiernan says, with the exception of a fire department softball league, he hasn't played in any recreational league since he was served with the suit. But will he play soccer again someday? I'd like to because I need the exercise, he says. You don't get much exercise in softball.