ALBANY, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) - A golfer who was hit in the eye by an errant ball during a tournament has no case against the course but a woman whose golf cart collided with a car in the parking lot can try her luck with a jury, New York’s highest court ruled.
Clarifying the doctrine of “assumption of the risk,” the New York Court of Appeals said April 15 people actively involved in a sport must accept reasonable risk of injury, but the situation isn’t so clear when the plaintiff is off the course.
David Katleski was participating in a tournament at Cazenovia Golf Club featuring a “shotgun start” where players tee off simultaneously from different holes. As Katleski was riding in a golf cart to the next hole, a player hooked his drive straight into Katleski’s left eye.
On the same day, 160 miles away, Mary Galante was driving her golf cart in the parking lot of the Erie Meadows Golf Course when it collided with a car, ejecting her onto the pavement.
The Court of Appeals dismissed Katleski’s case but allowed Galante’s to proceed.
“The risk of being struck by a mishit ball while golfing is inherent in the game and there is no evidence that the design of the course unreasonably enhanced that risk,” the Judge Anthony Cannataro wrote. But driving a golf cart, while not actually playing golf, is a different matter, the court said.
New York eliminated assumption of the risk as absolute defense by statute in 1975, but the Court of Appeals has kept alive a “limited vestige” of the doctrine it calls “primary assumption of the risk” for athletic activities. The high court justifies the exception as “necessary to promote free and vigorous participation in sports and recreative activities,” which have social value despite the risk of injury.
For assumption of the risk to apply, it isn’t necessary for the plaintiff to have foreseen the specific way their injury occurred, only that they were aware of the risk. An exception is risks that are “concealed or unreasonably enhanced.”
One example: A baseball drill during which two balls were thrown at players near first base at the same time, that ended with a high school player hit in the face. The same court decided it wasn’t an unreasonable risk for a baseball player to collide with another and fall into bleachers during a drill where boundary lines were ignored.
Katleski’s case failed because he couldn’t show the course design was unreasonably unsafe. While he hired an expert who said the tee box was dangerous, the high court noted many golf courses lack visibility between holes and the tee box at Cazenovia was deliberately designed to make the hole more competitive.
Galante had better luck. An appeals court ruled in her case “the risk of being injured while driving a golf cart is inherent in the sport of golf,” but the high court disagreed. Since she wasn’t engaged in the sport of golf when the accident occurred, she can put the case in front of a jury to decide if she deserves damages, the court concluded.
Kara M. Rosen represented plaintiff Katleski, while Benjamin J. Andrews represented Galante. The National Golf Course Owners Assoc. filed a brief in support of the defendants.