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.