BOSTON (WHDH) - A deposition from Red Sox owner John Henry was played Thursday during the court proceedings surrounding a woman who filed a lawsuit after she was hit in the face by a foul ball at Fenway Park in 2014.
Henry said there used to be glass behind the area known as the EMC Club where the woman was sitting. That glass was removed in 2005. Henry said in his deposition that to his knowledge, no study was conducted about foul balls entering that area.
Henry also said he puts his own family members in the seats in the EMC Club because “I think of it as a very safe place…relative to sitting down below.”
When questioned, Henry said foul balls make their way into the EMC Club about 2-3 times per game.
Stephanie Taubin, of Brookline, told Suffolk Superior Court jurors in earlier testimony that she could hear the bones in her face crack when she was hit by a ball fouled off by slugger David Ortiz.
“I heard the bones crack. It just kind of knocked me,” Taubin said. “I felt an enormous amount of pain.”
Taubin was in the EMC Club behind home plate when she stood to cheer on Ortiz during a late-inning plate appearance. Moments later, a curving line drive left her with facial fractures and neurological damage.
“I saw him hit the ball. I heard the ball come off the bat,” Taubin said. “It came up towards the right and then came over and hit me on the left side of my face.”
Taubin filed a lawsuit against team owner John Henry in 2015, claiming negligence on behalf of the ballclub. The ball came through an area usually protected by glass. The glass had been removed for renovations.
Despite undergoing three surgeries, Taubin said she is still suffering.
“They had to go in through the roof of my mouth, the side of my head, over my eye and under my eye,” Taubin said as she described the surgeries.
Taubin said she was angered when a young woman working as a Red Sox ambassador showed up at the hospital and gave her a gift bag of souvenirs as she was undergoing treatment.
“It was such insult to injury,” Taubin said. “This is the consolation prize for getting hit in the head? They’re going to send you a bobblehead?”
Henry says he considers someone being hit above the neck a significant injury.
“Especially for someone, for a woman it’s traumatic to get hit in the face or above the neck,” he said.
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