Woman sues Isotopes over stray ball that injured hand

A Santa Fe County woman on Wednesday sued the Albuquerque Isotopes baseball club for negligence because she was hit by a baseball while eating popcorn during a 2014 game.

Shirley Saccoccia filed the lawsuit through Santa Fe lawyer Scott Voorhees. Her complaint alleges the baseball club “had a duty to exercise reasonable care to make the premises safe for persons attending baseball games.”

The baseball club breached that duty in “negligent ways,” the lawsuit alleges, including “failing to erect protective screening to prevent baseballs from entering the seating area” and “failing to warn attendees of baseball games of the danger of sitting along the third base line where there is a higher likelihood of being struck by a baseball.”

At the August 2014 baseball game, Saccoccia was “in the process of putting some pieces of popcorn in her mouth when her hand was violently struck by a ball that had been batted into the seating area,” the lawsuit says. She received “painful injuries to her hand.”

Saccoccia’s online résumé says she is a 2002 University of New Mexico graduate who has since worked as a photographer, film producer and member of the New Mexico Tech Council.

Officials with the baseball club could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Saccocia is asking a state district judge in Santa Fe enter a judgment against the triple-A baseball club to pay her for past and future medical expenses, loss of household services, loss of income, loss of enjoyment of life, and for “pain and suffering, past and future, in an amount to be determined at trial.”