## Facts

- The Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA) conducted a district tournament basketball game at a junior high school fieldhouse under a written contract placing the event under its “management, supervision and direction.”
- Marion Boyer attended as a paid spectator and sat with companions in the top row of a retractable wooden-and-steel bleacher section, several feet above the gym floor.
- Near the end of the close game, spectators commonly stood on seats or footrests to see better; Boyer and others in her section stood as well.
- As Boyer’s group began leaving, the seats and footrests in that bleacher section collapsed or folded back, throwing Boyer and another spectator to the floor and leaving Boyer’s husband hanging.
- Only that section collapsed; everyone in it had been standing.

## Issues

1. Whether the bleacher collapse permitted an inference of negligence against IHSAA under res ipsa loquitur (including whether IHSAA had sufficient management and control of the instrumentality).
2. Whether the trial court committed reversible instructional error regarding IHSAA’s contractual responsibility and by refusing to single out the absence of prior similar bleacher collapses.

## Decision

- The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the judgment entered on a jury verdict for Boyer.
- The court held the case was properly submitted on res ipsa loquitur because the bleachers were under IHSAA’s management for the tournament and such a collapse ordinarily does not occur if reasonable care is used.
- The court found no reversible error in the instructions as a whole, including the refusal to give an instruction emphasizing the lack of prior accidents.

## Legal Principles

- Res ipsa loquitur permits a fact-finder to infer negligence when the instrumentality causing injury was under the defendant’s management or control and the occurrence is of a type that ordinarily would not happen absent negligence.
- “Control” is assessed functionally; contractual management of an event and responsibility for inspection and safety can satisfy the control requirement even if the plaintiff cannot identify the specific mechanical failure.
- Foreseeable, ordinary spectator conduct during an athletic event does not defeat res ipsa loquitur absent evidence that such conduct, rather than a lack of reasonable care, caused the collapse.
- A trial court may refuse an instruction that gives undue emphasis to evidence favorable to one side (such as the absence of prior similar incidents) when the instructions otherwise fairly submit the issues.

## Conclusion

The court upheld liability based on res ipsa loquitur for a bleacher collapse during a tournament conducted under IHSAA’s contractual management, treating the association’s event-control and inspection responsibility as sufficient to support an inference of negligence and rejecting claimed instructional errors.


Boyer v. Iowa High Sch. Athletic Ass’n, 152 N.W.2d 293 (Iowa 1967)