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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Courts - "Golf Courses: A Gold Mine for Lawsuits"

On Sept. 13th, 2010 the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of Cassie Pfenning v. Joseph Lineman, et al. - here is the summary from the Court's site:

After Cassie Pfenning was struck by a golf ball while driving a beverage cart on a golf course, she filed a complaint for negligence against her grandfather who invited her to the golf event, the golfer who hit the ball that struck her, the Elks County Club where the event was held, and Whitey's 31 Club Inc., which sponsored the event. The Grant Superior Court entered summary judgment for all the defendants. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Here was the beginning of Judge Kirsch's Feb. 15, 2010 dissent in the COA opinion:
Hmmm. After being abandoned by her grandfather and his sister, in whose care she had been entrusted, a sixteen-year-old girl, without training or experience in golf course safety or etiquette, is injured at a golf outing sponsored by a bar, while she is driving a beverage cart loaded with beer dispensed by one of the bar's employees. Surely, there is a duty here someplace.
An opinion has not yet been issued. For coverage of the oral argument, see this ILB entry from Sept. 14, 2010, and this entry from Sept.13th.

The pending decision came to mind a few days back when I read this Dec. 22, 2010 NY Times story by Peter Applebome. A sample:

Ever since people have trod meadows and moors intent on striking hard white balls with bottom-weighted clubs, people have been suing one another for shots gone awry. Golf has evolved into the perfect litigation machine, beloved by lawyers, perhaps because so many are making a good living filing suits, defending suits and providing advice on injuries, course and product design, environmental damage, discrimination and almost anything that could conceivably find its way into a courtroom.

“Golf and the law seem to have been made for each other,” writes Craig Brown, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario in “Why Lawyers Love Golf,” published in 2007 in Australia by Scribblers Publishing. “On every fairway, in every stretch of rough, in every clubhouse, in every golf bag, at every swing at the ball, in every set of plans for a new course, in every application for club membership, there lurks a potential lawsuit.”

There’s much logic to this. Golf involves hitting a rock-hard ball at high speed in unpredictable directions. Its devotees often range from the comfortable to the wealthy, the perfect demographic for suing and being sued. Golfers cover all ages, but many are old enough that the misplaced step onto sod covering a hole that is shrugged off by a 20-year-old ends the square-dancing career of a retiree in her 60s. It involves vast areas of land, often including wetlands and endangered species, and tons of fertilizer and pesticides. Its products (balls alone are a three-quarter billion-dollar business in the United States) and brand names (witness the Big Bertie knockoffs of Big Bertha drivers) are the subject of billion-dollar patent infringement and intellectual property claims.

So the legal issues come in all shapes and sizes. Often they involve golf carts, which can tip over and kill or injure their occupants. They involve environmental issues: the Battlefield Golf Club in Virginia was sued for $1.6 billion in 2009 by 400 nearby residents who claimed that 1.5 million tons of fly ash used to construct the course contaminated their well water.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 30, 2010 09:12 AM
Posted to Courts in general