Claim For Injunction Against Golf Club

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29246, 2 July 1960, Page 14

Claim For Injunction Against Golf Club

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 30. The president of the Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club said in the Magistrate’s Court, at Wellington today that he found it hard to believe that 437 golf balls had struck a property adjoining the club’s ninth fairway lima Priscella Oakley-Timmins, a widow, of Paraparaumu Beach, is seeking an injunction against the club to restrain club members from hitting golf balls into her property and damaging it. She is claiming £lOO general damages and special damages of £lO Ils 6d against the club.

The plaintiff produced as an exhibit a suitcase containing 437 golf balls which she alleged had struck her property during the last two years. Mr L. G. Rose appeared for the plaintiff and Mr B. N. Vickerman for the defendant. H Mr J. B. Thomson. S.M., was on the Bench. •

Douglas Ogilvie White, president of the Paraparaumu Beach Golf Club, cross-examined by Mr Rose, agreed that if 437 golf balls landed on the plaintiff's property in two years it would be a nuisance.

“Allowing three playing days a week, it is two balls a day,” he said. “That is not quite so serious as the headlines in the papers suggest. If it goes on I concede it would be a nuisance.” Changes of Tee Witness agreed that till the club moved the ninth tee about December there had been a nuisance which affected the plaintiff. At the end of April the club had experimented with a tee 10 yards to the left of the original one to see whether the risk could be lessened. Since April the tee had been moved back to a position which put the plaintiff’s property out of reach of almost everyone in New Zealand. The club was doing its utmost to prevent balls entering the plaintiff’s property. "We have changed the tee four times,” the witness said. “We have had at least four committee meetings at which we have discussed it at length, and have been out on Saturday and Sunday mornings on the ground to try to find a solution. I dispute very strongly the suggestion the club has not taken any action. We are willing to do anything within reason, but we do not want to destroy, what is regarded as one of the world's great courses.” Mr Rose: Does not the remedy lie in your own hands to make it a short hole? X The witness: A golf course wiith five short holes would no longer be regarded as a championship course. If there is another solution we would like to find it. The witness said that on golf courses throughout the world there,were certain risks. In many instances persons who lived in houses bordering a golf course were members of the golf club. He presumed that, strictly speaking. it could be contended every golf course should have a border of 200 yards to prevent persons being hit by balls. “That would shut half the courses of the. world. There has been a half-way point of tolerance," he said. He would give an assurance on behalf of the club that the nintn tee would remain in its present

position till the club was able to get rid of the whole problem by making alterations to a sandhill. “Without scrapping the whole thing and redesigning the course, I do not see how much farther we can go,” he said. The witness said the question of whether an average of two balls a day striking a property was serious was “a matter of golf politics, law, and all sorts of things, and very difficult to answer.” It 12 golf balls struck a property within an hour and a half the seriousness of the matter would depend on where they landed. There were risks on golf courses throughout New Zealand, and they were accepted in a “cooperative spirit.” Mr Rose: That is your real grievance, is it not, that whatever the club does she (the plaintiff) should have accepted it? The witness: I think that if there bad been a little more tolerance on both sides this tiling would not have come to Court.

“Slight Not Justified” The witness said that the plaintiff was not a golfer and did not understand that the two previous occupants of her house had been members of the club and that it was customary for players to climb over the fence to retrieve balls. She had refused to let players get their balls, and he believed she had been rude to them. The public had formerly been allowed to use the course, and some of the actions for which members had been blamed could have been attributable to nonmembers. The impression created by newspaper reports was a slight upon club members which in his opinion was not justified. Mr Rose: You are not suggesting the plaintiff is doing anything other than exercising legal rights? .

The witness: No’. To the Magistrate, the witness said he conside-ed the present position of the tee would eliminate 95 per cent, of the balls that went over the plaintiff’s fence. “I am sure the reconstruction of the fairway will overcome the problem, and the club is committed to do that,” he said.

The hearing was adjourned Sine die.