FITNESS FOLLIES: OVERWEIGHT, OUT OF SHAPE AND OUT OF COURT
A 46-year-old gentleman, overweight and not having exercised at all, meets
a personal-fitness trainer in a store. He decides he would like to look
as buffed as the trainer, and he tells him so. They strike a deal for
training. They schedule the first session at Gold's Gym.
The session starts at a moderate pace. The client spends 12 minutes on
a level treadmill at a walking speed; then come some dumbbell presses;
then some push-ups. The client asks for a break, but the trainer does
not allow it. On he goes into more dumbbell presses on a bench, and he
again protests that he cannot do any more. The trainer pushes him on using
both ridicule and masculine encouragement. Forty or fifty minutes pass.
While doing some leg lifts, the client begins to experience chest pain,
but he does not tell the trainer saying instead that he is out of breath
and needs water. After dousing himself over the head with water, the client
promptly lies down on the floor and suffers a heart attack. The scene
then moves from Gold's Gym to the courthouse.
The customer sues the personal trainer for negligence. He claims that the
trainer as well as the Gym should have first investigated his health condition
and the risk of a heart attack. The defense counters that the risk of
a heart attack is inherent in strenuous physical training; and under California's
doctrine of primary assumption of risk defendants bear no responsibility.
The court agrees with the defense.
Since 1992 California law has barred recovery for injuries suffered during
participation in sports. The court's reason, in essence, is that,
if you play the game, you accept the risk that another player may injure
you inadvertently. Of course, you do not take the risk of an intentional
or highly reckless act, but only one that would normally occur in the
course of the game. This rule has been extended to situations where the
injury occurs during a lesson on how to play the sport. The logic of protecting
a coach or instructor, however, seems less compelling to me, because one
would hope that the coach possesses more wisdom and more presence of mind
than a player in the heat of battle.
In this new case [Rostal v. Neste Enterprises (April 5, 2006)] the court
went even farther. Not only did the instructor bear no liability, but
he had a perfect right to push his client to perform even beyond what
the client could reasonably do given his level of fitness. To quote the
court, the fitness trainer may "challenge plaintiff to perform beyond
his level of physical ability of fitness. That challenge, however, is
the very purpose of fitness training, and is precisely the reason one
would pay for the services of a personal trainer." As a result, the
court reasoned, the client accepted "the risk that the trainer will
not accurately assess the participant's ability and the participant
will be injured as a result." The court found no evidence that the
trainer had consciously intended to push his client to the point of cardiac arrest.
Though everything the court says about fitness training is true, at least
in my personal experience, I wonder whether the decision makes any practical
sense. Charging into the first workout session in total ignorance of one's
state of health is a reckless act. Whether that recklessness is attributable
to the trainer or to the client is a question one can debate, but reckless
it remains. If the client has not spent time with his physician in advance,
surely the trainer should tell him to do that before he walks through
the door to the gym. The training will prove more effective if begun moderately
and, most importantly, if the client survives until the next session.
By the way, Gold's Gym escaped liability for the same reason. Gold's
did not employ the instructor and, even if Gold's had, its duty to
the client could not have been any greater than the instructor's.