Depends on discovery and depositions. What are the chances James Franklin would be deposed? How about some Ohio State staff? The defendants attorney could sling a whole bunch at an entire University (Michigan) that has a massive budget with a bunch of paid professionals and a known problem. The plaintiff's attorney is after a couple of 20 year-olds that got in a fight. Oh Boy.
The defendants attorney is also tracking what changes will be made after the MSU melee. Why didn't they make these changes before? Cost? Did they like to intimidate their opposition?
Michigan, if they've figured it out, needs this to go away more than MSU.
Riiiiiiiight. Sorry in advance everyone for the long response filled with lawyer speak but armchair lawyering often means complete disinformation, and
On depositions, sure you can depose almost anyone you want. The problem is actually being able to use that testimony. It has to be relevant. And by that I mean legally relevant, not relevant to internet message board users. In most jurisdictions that means for a prior incident to be admissible it has to be pretty much the same incident, and it has to be relatively recent. Let's say 10 years. So show me the incident where a player was cornered and beaten in that tunnel in the last 10 years. That gets in. The Penn St. PBJ incident, or OSU shouting match, probably don't.
Also subsequent remedial measures (i.e. fixing a hazard after the fact) are pretty much absolutely never admissible as evidence of the hazard. The obvious reason for this is that if you could use it as evidence nobody would ever remediate a hazard for fear it would be used against them. And I don't even know what "did they like to intimidate their opposition" means or what it has to do with this. Football teams always try to intimidate their opposition, I really just don't understand the point here.
Btw, did you google "open and obvious"? Because if you're going to use the Penn St. incident as proof Michigan should have been on notice, you're setting yourself up for a potential summary judgment on those grounds. The Michigan player would have also been on notice, so the hazard would have been open and obvious. Case over.
And if you think juries are going to have sympathy for 20 year old men beating on another 20 year old man then congratulations, you obviously have little to no experience with our criminal justice system, may we all be so lucky.
This is not to say there's zero risk to Michigan. You never know. But in my opinion this is one where if I'm in Michigan’s legal office I'm not really worrying about it.