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Personal Injury

You Be The Judge

In this feature of A Potpourri, we pose facts and issues faced by the courts in recent cases and give our readers the opportunity to decide how they would rule if they were sitting as the judge with the responsibility of deciding the parties’ disputes. Please see page 8 for the court’s decision and rationale.

In this You Be the Judge article, we are posing a simple, multiple-choice question – similar to those faced by graduated law students who take the Illinois bar examination. (The failure rate is recently a miserable 40%.)

Plaintiff was approaching the 17^th green when Defendant was teeing off from the 18^th tee. Unexpectedly, Defendant’s ball veered sharply left, striking Plaintiff in the ankle and causing her severe injury. Defendant did not recall whether he had closed his club face or hit the ball with the heel of the club. He testified: “I don't remember every single detail of the shot, and, you know, where my feet were. Did one of my feet slip? Did my hand twist?” He did not know. Select one or more of the following answers:

(a) Defendant did not properly swing his club at the ball so as to hit his ball in the direction of the 18^th hole where he was aiming;

(b) Defendant failed to maintain a proper lookout;

(d) Defendant was otherwise careless and negligent in shooting his golf shot directly at Plaintiff; or

(e) It is common knowledge, at least among players, that many bad shots must result although every stroke is delivered with the best possible intention and without any negligence whatever.

YOU BE THE JUDGE DECISION

The correct answer is (e). The Illinois Appellate Court recently upheld a verdict in favor of Defendant, holding “. . . the mere fact that a person is struck by a golf ball driven by one playing a game of golf does not constitute proof of negligence on the part of the golfer who hit the ball.” The court reasoned that “(a)lthough the object of the game of golf is to drive the ball as cleanly and directly as possible toward its ultimate intended goal (the hole), the possibility that the ball will fly off in another direction is a risk inherent in the game. . . The essence of tort liability is the failure to take reasonable steps, where possible, to minimize the chance of harm. Thus, to establish liability in tort, there must be both the existence of a recognizable risk and some basis for concluding that the harm flowing from the consummation of that risk was reasonably preventable.” Defendant may have lost his golf game, but he won his lawsuit.

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Jerome F. Crotty