Alright legal eagles, what is the lawsuit going to be? What's the cause of action? How is he going to handle the problem of contributory liability? How's he going to avoid the obvious defenses, defense of others and trespass, off the top of my head? And finally, what are his damages? The cost to get the grass stain out of his shirt? The humiliation of being handled on national television?
Yeah, we have a litigious society--in no small part because of the attitudes of some of the very people posting in this thread (everything that's wrong with America, remember?)--but in this case, the guy acted reasonably under the circumstances. He's more likely to get honored at half-time than sued, and if he does get sued, the kid should be ridiculed and criticized for the week it takes the court to throw out his case, not praised for doing the right thing.
Goodness gracious you have an aversion to production of facts...
It depends on the state, but again, there are no facts here supporting your claim.
Use of force to detain citizens is dependent on the state laws, but that primarily pertains to security personnel. For example, if a security officer tackles someone who is trying to shoplift an item and the guy dies of a subdural or epidural hematoma, that's very different than if another shopper tackles the guy or if a non-security employee tackles the guy and the guy dies. The security personnel has specific training to meet legal guidelines particularly regarding use of force issues. I haven't found the specific laws in Ohio yet, but generally if a person was killed for streaking by a coach... that would be a HUGE liability.
Granted, this guy is probably fine, and so there is not much that the school has to worry about if he doesn't have some major injury. However, if he was, there's a huge legal difference between being tackled by police vs non-police private security vs a random citizen vs an employee of the facility on which the event occurred.
Furthermore, what if this was a young adult with autism and he was tackled like that? We couldn't know based entirely on the video. It is
remarkably unlikely, but these are things that must be considered when looking at liability.
I have yet to give definitive proof within the laws of the state of Ohio, because a 30 minute search did not show them, but what I'm presenting is based on a few varied articles about why security officers have training and what they are and are not allowed to do. I would be happy to defer to Earle or anyone else with specific legal knowledge about this, but really, if you can't see that there is a potential risk here, I hope you never have a career as a bouncer.
And as I've said a number of times, I don't ethically have anything against what happened... I'm just saying it was a risky choice on his part and could have had significant legal implications.