"$14.5M settlement reached in family's Louisville Slugger lawsuit"

In a case that heightened awareness of the risks of youth sports, a Wayne, New Jersey family whose son was left brain damaged after being hit in the chest by a line drive during a Little League baseball game in 2006 accepted a $14.5 million settlement Wednesday from an aluminum bat maker. More

Hey, you personal injury lawyers out there, explain this one to me. If the story is correct, there was no allegation that the aluminum bat was defective -- just that it was, well, aluminum and, therefore, the ball flew off of it faster than a wooden bat.  No one disputes that.  So just why would the bat manufacturer settle?