By Rick Shapiro, VA Brain Injury Attorney
Inadequate facilities and a lack of supervision at a Virginia Tech basketball camp in Blacksburg, VA, contributed to the severe head injury sustained by a camper.
At least that’s the claim made in a Virginia personal injury lawsuit brought by Gary Schuler, whose teen-aged son, Austin Schuler, was injured in 2009, according to a report in the Roanoke Times. Injury lawyers acting for the family are suing the Seth Greenberg Basketball Camp and Virginia Tech for $2.5 million in a civil action brought last month in Montgomery County Circuit Court.
Austin Schuler was 15 when he fell or was thrown from the basketball court during a game and hit his head on a wall, suffering a brain injury, fracture, bruises, a cut and other wounds, according to the personal injury lawsuit, filed March 28.
Although Austin Schuler, who now lives near Staunton, Virginia, has recovered, but the lawsuit states he is at greater future risk of future injury and health issues. The personal injury lawsuit says the facilities at Blacksburg were inadequate to protect Schuler. Specifically it states the wall in a gym at Virginia Tech should have been padded near ground level where the boy struck his head.
The lawsuit further argues the distance between the end of the playing surface and wall, which was 33 inches, should have been greater; while the game official was not sufficiently trained and qualified.
We recently reported how baseball is taking extra precautions to protect players against brain and head injuries. Major league baseball has adopted a new joint policy related to concussions, which includes the creation of a seven-day disabled list.
Increasingly, schools and sports authorities are taking action to learn more about the symptoms of concussion and other sports injuries. Major steps have been taken in Virginia (VA) in recent months to improve the safety of baseball, including a ban on high performance aluminum bats.
These high performance metal bats make the baseball travel faster. A metal bat may have been linked to a traumatic brain injury suffered by a high school baseball player who was hit in the head by a line drive and sent into a coma last year.
Our Virginia personal injury lawyers have handled cases involving baseball and have handled other major Virginia brain injury personal injury cases as well. In one baseball related case, which we recently concluded, the manufacturer and the seller of a baseball pitching machine had improperly designed their product in such a way as to cause a facial injury to the athlete who was using the equipment. Our injury attorneys (based in Virginia) developed substantial evidence and were able to obtain the settlement for our injured client.
The Virginia Tech lawsuit asks the significant questions of whether schools and colleges are doing enough and if sports facilities require fundamental redesigns to achieve greater safety for our athletes. The court of public opinion seems to be demanding more. This is exemplified by head and brain injuries suffered by our military in Iraq, as well as how active the NFL has been recently on brain injury and concussions.
DM
About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is a law firm whose attorneys focus on injury and accident law, and we have experience handling traumatic brain injury and general head injury cases. Check out our case results to see for yourself. Our primary office in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA). Our attorneys achieved the largest verdict in Virginia’s history for a brain-damaged client in 2000. Our injury lawyers also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Furthermore, we proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard and Norfolk Injuryboard as pro bono public information services. While not every brain injury case meets our criteria, if you or a loved one is thinking about taking legal action against a possibly at-fault person or company who caused your injury, call our office at (800) 752-0042 for a free consultation. If you cannot get through due to high call volume, be sure to leave a voicemail. We will return your call.
