Fair enough. In the future I will make sure to. Many people spell it “gaffe”…
Cites:
This attorney in Florida has some excellent advice regarding homeownership on or adjacent to golf courses in his state.
Golf Digest published two companion articles in July of 2002. The first article reviewed some of the worst golf course homes in the United States. An companion article discussing legal issues was not one of the free ones accesable on the Web, but apparently it was published in the same month’s issue.
Hehehe, reading that case from Massachusetts takes me back to the good old days of law school final exam questions. :eek:
Although the opinion doesn’t say, it would appear that the design of the hole in question is such that it lends itself to balls landing on the two properties. But the nail in the coffin for the case was the existence of the prior decision, Fenton v. Quabog Country Club, Inc., 353 Mass. at 536. I’d love to post a link to that case, which likely engages in a more complete discussion of trespass v. nuisance. However, I can’t locate a way to obtain the opinion in question; Massachusetts appears to be quite proprietary with regard to the reports of the various appellate courts.
The case in the magazine article is Amaral v. Cuppels, a slip opinion apparently issued in July of 2005.
I’m not going to comment other than to say that the opinion in Amaral recites a lot of trespass v. nuisance distinctions, but does absolutely nothing to address how they really apply to the case in question. Taken to its extreme, no golf course would be able to exist next to housing or any other property which would be affected by errant golf balls. Twelve balls on the property a day during a Saturday would not be an unusual total; I probably could personally vouch for four of them!
BobT - You proved a saying I frequently use in respect ot golf. “Anybody can hit a good golf shot. It’s hitting 70 in row that creates the difficulty.”
As for houses, unfortunately very few golf courses get built anymore that aren’t part of a housing development. The financial model requires the houses to raise the cash to build the course. It’s almost impossible to borrow the money to build just a golf course. Too risky. The real estate is expensive so the result is a golf course lined with houses with little or no distance between the house and the course itself. While not a legal opinion, it’s my personal opinion that the homeowner deserves what he/she gets, which is a lot of errant golf balls.
Stupid story short, as a young guy, I once watched as an idiot friend tried to get into his locked house. He didn’t have a house key with him and finally decided to break the glass in the storm door, next to the front door. He smacked it with a hammer. Didn’t break. Hit it again and again. No luck. Next, he tried a brick. :rolleyes: First time, he lobbed it. Next few times, he threw it. It bounced off again and again. I’m not sure whether that storm window was tempered glass, but it wouldn’t break and it definitely was not plexiglass. The window had to be 30 years old–predating polycarbonate windows, I believe.
During an attempted break-in a few years ago at my house, the would-be thief didn’t get through the tempered glass on a side door. A police officer who responded said he has seen big cops beat the tar out of tempered glass with a police baton, without breaking it. He said he’s also seen someone throw actually throw a cinder block at it, without breaking it. That said, he said a pointed object–nail, ice pick, etc–can easily break it into a thousand pieces. That’s the kind of technique that professional burglars use, I believe.
Anyway, I had laminated glass installed, with beefed up windows. Cost a lot, but it’s exceptionally difficult to break, unless you kick out the entire window.
The only time I have ever seen a course side home hit by a golf ball was while playing with a friend at a local course. He hit his approach shot really thin and it shot over the green just a few feet in the air headed straight for the French doors of the house behind the green. Fortunately the doors were open. The ball shot past the doors, hit the end of the dining table and rolled up onto the green ready for the tap in birdy. After that I shanked mine into the bunker.
According to this law review article (pdf), *Fenton * was issued in 1968, so I’m not surprised that it is tough to find online. Also, the appellee’s name is misspelled in the article: Quaboag.
The article is a pretty good read: Avoiding Legal Sandtraps on the Golf Course – How Liability is Apportioned for Golfer’s Bad Shots, Willamette Sports Law Journal (Winter 2004).
I rented an apartment in Ohio that bordered on a golf course. The apartment complex was (of course) liable for damage to the apartment’s exterior. But cars and possessions in the apartments (e.g. large-screen TVs) were not covered. My insurance company said that my renter’s insurance covered golf-ball damage just like it would cover a break-in or vandalism; however my car insurance would not and could not cover golf balls without lowering my ($500) deductible to the point where auto glass would be covered by the company.
I saw an argument develop between a foursome of golfers when the first drive of the foursome broke a light fixture on the apartment building, and the second drive went over the apartment, shattered a sunroof, and set off the owner’s car alarm. I saw both drives (but couldn’t tell the golfers apart) and was already on my way towards them to talk to them about the light fixture – and the car alarm went off. The owner had just pulled in from work and was standing nearby. He came around the corner really quickly holding the golf ball in a take-out napkin. At first, all four of the golfers insisted that we give the ball back, and two of them were insistent that this was their ball and we had “no right to slow them down”.
Then the car owner mentioned his sunroof – and I brought up the light fixture again – and they realized that the two of them who had been teeing off had each caused a lot of damage and would be liable, and suddenly nobody could remember who was supposed to hit first or whose ball it was. The cops showed up in about five minutes and once I had told them what was going on I got out of there. Una, it may comfort you that the golfers on this day came shockingly close to matching your (hyperbolic) description.
The apartment complex posted a note a few days later reminding golfers that they were liable for damage to the apartment’s property and to the personal property in the area. Whether this caused more golfers to turn themselves in or not was a matter of heated debate – as Una noted, the golf course is a business, and most of the damage happens while the owners are away.
Both of these articles seem to suggest that if you are driving down a road anywhere near a golf course and get hit by a wild ball, it’s up to you to track down the offender inside the golf course and sue them personally.
I own a store, and my store windows have the same glass in them as my house does–just plain old residential glass windows. I don’t know of any store owners around here that have special glass in their windows. Maybe things are different in New York City, but your assertion says “all” store windows, and that’s absolutely wrong.
Actually, the article does not talk about golf course liability–it only deals with golfer liability. But the situation is a little different from what you think. Even the golfer might not be liable.
The link was to an article discussing New York law, and cites* Gleason v. Hillcrest Golf Course*, 148 Misc. 246, 265 N.Y.S. 886 (Mun. Ct. Queens Co. 1933) which held a golfer jointly and severally liable with a golf course for his “sliced” shot which went over six foot fence onto highway, striking car windshield and injuring plaintiff.
The article reviews a more recent case:
The article I cited most recently reviews law nationwide and concludes:
So it is easier for someone outside the course to recover against the club than it is for them to recover against the golfer.
Amazingly enough, the actual decision as reported from the Amaral case also has the misspelling; that’s where I got the spelling in the first place!
Makes me think there is some pretty slipshod legal work going on in Massachusetts at the appellate court level. What the hell do those Harvard Law grads working as clerks think they’re doing??
I’ll second Jurph’s statement that you were not far from the truth. It’s why your description had me ROTFLMAO. The second (and last) time I went golfing was as part of a foursome. Three of us (not me, oddly) were wasted on Budweiser (not light though), and the one guy who WAS reeking of Axe smacked two houses in 9 holes. I was never sure if he was doing it on purpose or not.
It is unbelievable to me that homes adjoining a golf course are considered desirable and sell for a premium.
Not only do you have to contend with errant balls whacking into your home, possessions and potentially causing injury - but there’s the noise factor (from machinery as well as golfers), exposure to whatever interesting chemicals are being used on the course and general loss of privacy.
The idea of fencing to block errant shots is a nice one, but may not work so well in reality. My old municipal course had at least a 30-foot screen along the right-hand side of the 17th fairway, but I can attest to the fact that it was easy to sky a sliced drive over the screen. It was a pretty densely wooded neighborhood in there, so if an errant drive was not accompanied by breaking glass or screams, we generally assumed all was well and would move on.
It may help to understand the mind-set of those who do see such value. I have a friend who just built a beautiful home on a fairway lot in an upscale part of Southern California’s eastern Coachella Valley. The cost of the lot alone was three times what we paid for our entire home on an Arizona acre. He lives for the sound of multi-platform, nap-of-the-earth, laser-guided lawn mowers whirring past his bedroom window in the morning, for the smell of fresh chlorophyll, Roundup and commercial-strength DeCon, and for the sight of ducks, geese and other frantic waterfowl scattering wildly from wayward drives that disturb the usually placid water hazard outside his glass-front greatroom. This guy actually bounds out of bed at the first sound of a golf ball ricocheting off his imported Italian patio tiles, not to rebuke the offending duffer, but to get in on the action, much like a 16-year old surfer afraid of missing the last, great set.
I really don’t get it either… until it comes time to sell out to some other fanatic at twice what he paid!
