Serious injuries take the cheer out of cheerleading

Injury lawsuits related to cheerleading, recently named the most dangerous youth sport, are springing up around the country.

The sport has come a long way from pom-poms and cartwheels, now featuring spectacular aerial acrobatics by lithe female “flyers” who are thrown 20 feet in the air with only a web of adolescent arms to cushion their descent.

A recent study by the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research found cheerleading to be the leading cause of severe and fatal injuries to young athletes, accounting for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among female sports.

Common injuries include spine and head injuries and lower back fractures. A number of accidents have resulted in paralysis and death.

Lawsuits are just beginning to crop up.

“Not a lot of lawyers are doing these cases yet, but it’s a burgeoning area,” said Robert Bonsignore of Bonsignore & Brewer in Medford, Mass.

Bonsignore recently filed suit on behalf of the family of Ashley Burns, a 14-year-old cheerleader who died while practicing flying stunts at a gym.

Under the radar

Cheerleading injuries have been “under the radar” for many years, said Kimberly Archie, who founded the National Cheer Safety Foundation in Irvine, Calif., after her own daughter suffered a cheerleading accident.

Archie, who consults as an expert in cheerleading cases and is lobbying for cheerleading to be regulated as a sport, said cheerleading is a “free-for-all” with no safety equipment, weak training standards and a lack of emergency preparedness when an injury does occur.

“When things go wrong, the injuries look like car accidents,” said Archie.

The lack of rules governing cheerleading creates a challenge for plaintiffs’ lawyers seeking to determine who is responsible and what the standard of care is.

“It’s not just negligence [a plaintiff must prove], it’s really extreme negligence. In order to hold the school or coach liable, you have to show the school or coach did something that increased the risk of injury over and above what is normal,” said Cynthia McGuinn, a plaintiffs’ attorney at Rouda, Feder Tietjen & McGuinn in San Francisco. She brought one of the first cheerleader lawsuits on behalf of a college freshman who was paralyzed from the waist down after she was dropped by her teammates during a flying stunt.

The suit sought $30 million in damages from San Jose State University and the California State University System. It settled for a confidential sum in 2007.

Matt Kyle, a personal injury trial lawyer in New Braunfeld, Texas, who settled a cheerleading case for an 8th-grade flyer who fell while performing an unfamiliar stunt, said coaches and gyms most often excuse injuries as a risk assumed by the cheerleader.

In what appears to be the only decision of its kind, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled this year that high school cheerleading is a “contact sport” and therefore teammates cannot be sued for injuries.

The court also held that the school district could not be sued for any negligence on the part of the coach, who was nearby when the fall occurred, because no law or rules mandated a second spotter or the use of mats.

Who to sue?

Another question in these cases is who to sue.

School districts, coaches and teammates are often named as defendants.

Bruce Fagel, a Los Angeles plaintiffs’ attorney, is suing the Los Angeles unified school district for injuries to a 17-year-old cheerleader who fell into a coma after a botched stunt.

The lawsuit includes allegations that no one knew how to operate emergency equipment, such as a defibrillator, at the game site, Fagel said.

In some states, however, schools districts are immune, although the scope of immunity varies.

For example, in Texas, schools are immune for any negligent acts except negligent vehicle operation or constitutional violations.

One possible constitutional claim against a school would be failure to provide the same safety precautions to women’s sports teams as men’s sports teams in violation of Title IX, Kyle said.

Private gyms are another potential defendant but they don’t always have general casualty or premises coverage, he added.

Another obstacle is that parents have typically signed waivers of liability, although depending on state law, waivers may not be enforceable unless they are conspicuous and expressly waive negligent acts, Kyle said.

An emerging issue in cheerleading cases is seeking to establish liability on the part of the companies that certify and train coaches and gyms.

In a novel approach, Bonsignore’s wrongful-death suit names Varsity Brands Inc., one of those companies, as a defendant.

“The real case is against the major companies that run it from the top down,” said Bonsignore.

His complaint alleges that the company and its subsidiaries operate cheerleading competitions, camps and activities worldwide, generating $2 billion in the U.S. alone in 2007.

Archie said that the case “lays out a whole new level of understanding about cheerleading and who is responsible.”

She contends that the company is privately held and holds a monopoly in the industry, with approximately 50 subsidiaries that operate camps, private cheerleading gyms and uniform sales companies.

The lawsuit also alleges that the company willfully misled coaches about the increased risk of injury and seeks punitive damages.

“When they took stunts from regulated sporting activities like gymnastics and acrobatics, they did not take the safety precautions, and lied about how dangerous it is,” Bonsignore said.

Sylvia Hsieh is a staff writer for Lawyers USA, where this first appeared.