GOLF ACCIDENTS

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 42, 20 February 1939, Page 10

GOLF ACCIDENTS

THAT ERRANT BALL LIABILITY OF PLAYERS The liability of golf clubs for accidents that Happen on their -courses has been brought prominently to notice by two litigations that have recently been reported from the law courts in Ireland. The Belfast case, in which an injured golfer was awarded damages of £ISOO, has been followed by a Dublin hearing of an action for damages in similar circumstances. Claims of this kind might at any time impose a serious burden upon a club, and no doubt in view of the Belfast decision clubs aie now casting their eye over their lay-out to see whether there are possibilities of danger (says a writer in a Scottish paper). The Cliftonville Club, near Belfast were defendants in the action along with the player who struck the bail that did the damage, but the court found that there was no liability on the part of this player. The circumstances of the accident were these: v While a player was walking on the f seventh green, which is partly screened by bushes, he was struck by a pulled drive from the eighth tec and so badly injured that he lost an eye. The injured player’s action against the club was on the grounus that the course at these holes was not laid out with a proper regard lor the safety of persons playing on it, ana the jury found that the club was at fault, both in its design and construction of the course and its failure lu show warning notices. The position as regards the individual player appears to be that ha takes his chance when he goes ou the course with obvious dangers, and that a slice or pull which cannot be helped is not, when the risk is obvious, actionable if it causes any injury to another player. The great majority of golfers will be relieved, of course, over (hat, for many of us arc guilty of the errant ball somewhere or other nearly every time we Play.