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If you move next to a golf course, what's a reasonable number of golf balls hitting your house? Court orders new trial on the question

The Supreme Judicial Court today ordered a new trial for a Kingston couple who had been awarded $3.5 million because their house and yard kept getting pummeled by golf balls from a neighboring course, ruling the judge in the case had bogeyed his instructions to the jury.

The state's highest court acknowledged that when the couple bought the house next to 15th hole at the Indian Pond golf course in 2017 - 16 years after the course opened - their deed included an easement allowing for the "reasonable and efficient operation" of a golf course in a "customary and usual manner."

But left unanswered in the verdict was the question of whether having hundreds of golf balls come flying onto their property was "reasonable," because the judge in the case did not fully instruct the jury on considering whether the easement absolved the course of blame, the court concluded.

According to the court's summary of the case:

651 golf balls had hit the property since 2017, breaking eight windows and damaging the house's siding and a railing on the deck.

The couple said they could not use their backyard for fear of getting bonked by errant balls and that the constant barrage had made them and their kids emotional wrecks.

A jury awarded the couple $100,000 for physical damage and $3.5 million for emotional distress - and for an order prohibiting the course from allowing golfing on the 15h hole unless it made changes to reduce the number of balls flying at them, such as planting ball-blocking trees. But the judge in the case failed to ace his closing instructions by not fully instructing the jury on considering whether the easement absolved the course of blame, resulting in possibly sub-par jury deliberations, the court concluded:

As the jury were not instructed accordingly, and the failure to give the instruction was prejudicial, the verdict must be reversed and the injunction lifted. We decline, however, to direct a verdict in the defendant's favor, as we cannot decide as a matter of law that the operation of the fifteenth hole and the number of errant shots hitting the plaintiffs' home was reasonable. With golf, some errant shots, way off line, are inevitable, but a predictable pattern of errant shots that arise from unreasonable golf course operation is not. In the instant case, a properly instructed jury are required to resolve whether the operation of the fifteenth hole, including the number of errant shots hitting the plaintiffs' home, was reasonable.

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Comments

One time Magoo was playing golf and a goose chased after Magoo. Said goose bit Magoo in the fanny. Magoo.

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They bought a house next to a golf course. What did they expect? Lots of weekend warriors out there that can’t play for shit and swing as hard as they can every time. Sue them, not the course.

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651 golf balls fast enough to break a window and give a concussion over a year. The law suit happened because golf course refused to even evaluate the situation. In Hindsight it is clear that the trees that used block the house grew old and were removed creating the problem. If the course had been willing to put a net temporarily and replant the trees as designed by the course architect, there would have been no lawsuit.

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Someone who buys a house adjacent to a shooting range deserves to have their home shot up?

JFC you're an idiot

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As you could come up with. If I bought a house near the highway should I complain the noise is too loud. How about over a bar/club?

JFC you’re the real idiot here. Have you ever played this course? I’d venture to guess not with your pleasant response.

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"Golf courses produce lots and lots of fertilizer runoff"

"Why should so much land be put to use to allow mostly men to walk around all day"

"They should have known better before buying an ugly energy sucking McMansion next to a golf course".

"This (insert here) should be turned into a park with puppet shows for children".

Yup, we get your anger over some people in life not displacing the working class from JP, Somerville, and Roslindale and instead hit balls around some grass. Get over it.

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I am never quite sure which side of an argument you’re actually on.

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.

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You sure showed "them."

Someone has a lot of class-related anger. Maybe he should take his own advice.

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Nah - Just pointing out people like you (with a name like that - suburban Atlanta raised? Do you have a brother name Rhett?) who rail against the cops, drivers, the T, native Bostonians, etc. and yet don't see themselves as the largest displacer of the working class in Boston.

Somehow all your self-assumed purity clouds from your eyes that people like you have caused more environmental and societal damage in this area that any other "class".

It's not anger, its pointing out facts.

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Wow, that's some impressive projection. You are really telling on yourself. Funny thing is, you got every one of those wrong.

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Didn’t you recently ask this troll to quit with this bullshit of assuming and attacking personal demographics of folks rather than staying on the discussion topic? You realize he doesn’t listen or change, right?

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Is that Finnish for Muffler Of Other's Opinions or is it Bossy Hall Monitor?

You attack people all the time. You and many, many others do, you just don't see it that way because you think you are righteous and pure.

Do As I Say, Not Do As I Do Eeka - Wonderful.

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Note how I described the content of your posts and engagement style, and you responded by engaging in personal attacks and stereotyping as you tend to.

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Don't they all make $200k per year?

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You can't be all "that's anti Catholic" and be making assumptions about all Southerners. JFC

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You are right.

My daughter's friend just told me about the debutante ball in Alabama she just went too with her roommate. So a lot of the stereotyping is true, but I am sure there are exceptions.

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.

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About someone yelling at clouds.

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to file suit in the first place

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Magoo missed out on this testicle joke and instead said something unrelated about a goose eating his ass.

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If errant drives are hitting the house, a big net would probably do the trick -- I've seen this in other places. But if people are doffing 9-iron shots onto the property, then there's simply insufficient buffer between the property and the play area.

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in five years an average of 2 balls per day hit their property. is that excessive for being on a golf course.?

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Winter days when nobody's going to be playing golf?

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That too.

Mid March to Thanksgiving is typically the extended season.

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I was a member of that club for almost 15 years. Probably played that hole over 500 times. Never once did I see a ball go anywhere near where that house was eventually built. Maybe not impossible, but it's surrounded by 50 foot pine trees. What proof is there of the 651 balls and 8 broken windows? (There is a wooded area below the house and deck that does gather balls, but it's not near the house).

My BS meter is wondering how real this complaint is.

And they have planted trees around the tee box making it really impossible to hit the house .

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The house was built later. Trees must have been removed to fit the house.

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First, the course predates the homeowners. Second, if the trees were removed to build the house, then whoever built the house would, in theory, be culpable.

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Yes they were part of the suit

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