Moving conversation from "What'd you Shoot?" thread....
Scott posted this pic of a line he took:
Redeyes posted this one, with commentary about how yellow circled house has signs complaining threatening a lawsuit for damage on their property:
I've made this post a long, long time ago, but the conversation reminded me of this hole on the course I grew up on:
On my image, tee box is green "x". Hitting a decent drive down the middle, you end up around the yellow dot. Alternatively, you USED to be able to hit over the tree marked with a red "x". If you were aggressive but somewhat conservative, you could go for the landing spot marked 2, which is a heavy downslope that can kick you down towards the green (it slopes a lot starting around the bunker). If you were feeling reckless, and many, MANY players did, you aim for one, purposefully trying to hit the road. If done on a relatively straight path, the curvature of all things would more than likely kick your ball down to the green or on it. This was a somewhat busy road and you could only see part of what was coming.
Connecting to the ScottC and Redeyes post, in my 100,000 foot legal opinion, if ScottC were to take that line and the ball somehow flew into someone's back yard and killed them, he is arguably liable because he made the conscious decision to take that line, and was negligent in doing so. Same with my hole: if you try to cut the road but ended up hitting a car and causing an accident, I'd argue you're liable. (Of course, in both scenarios you'd need proof it was a conscious decision...without more, ScottC just says he missed it; ignoring testifying under oath and the like).
However, if Redeyes were to aim for the fairway and shank one into Yellow Houses windows, I'd argue strongly he's NOT liable. As one court has said, a golfer is not "negligent" or liable if all they did was "make an inept tee shot."
Anyway, my remote access system is down and I can't access the things I need to, so here's this random post on golfer liability.