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Olympian Aly Raisman Hurt in Fall, But Can She Sue?

Monday, September 10, 2012 15:02

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(Before It's News)

We all heard the hoopla over Olympic gold medal winners and their potential tax liability. So we understand that these athletes need to get some attention and maybe some money while they prepare for the next Olympic Games.

Hometown hero Aly Raisman is promoting gymnastics by participating in the Kellogg’s Tour of Champions. But during a stop in Ontario, Calif., Raisman fell flat on her stomach onto the cement floor during her uneven bars performance, according to NewsCenter 5.

Would she have any ability to sue if she was injured?

In general, an injured victim’s ability to sue depends on the cause of the injury. Causation is clear when we are talking about intentional acts, like someone hitting your leg with a baseball bat on purpose.

However, when there is an accident or product defect, the cause of an injury is not always so clear. This is because there are two types of causation that must be found in a negligence case — the type of case you would file when the act was not intentional.

The first type of causation is called actual cause or the “but for” cause. This means that the action or defect, not any subsequent action, actually caused the harm. In other words, but for the accident, you would not be injured.

The other type of causation is called proximate cause, which means that the harm caused was foreseeable. For example, if you were driving well over the speed limit and failed to negotiate a curve, it would be foreseeable that you would cause damage (both to yourself and to any structures on the side of the road) by driving your car off the road.

In Aly Raisman’s fall, the legal question would be whether the cause of her fall was her own mistake, or if someone had incorrectly set up the uneven bars. If the bars had fallen while she was performing, then she could potentially recover.

However, it seems like it was her own slip that caused the fall. If you think that your injury has been caused by someone else’s actions, you should call a Boston personal injury attorney to see if you have a claim.

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