Are you Liable for Hitting a House with a Golf Ball?

By Joe Maney*

If you’re reading this on your phone while sitting in a golf cart with a broken window to your right and a Pro V1 in someone’s living room, you should probably put your phone down and read this another day. If you’re just curious what would happen if you sliced your drive through someone’s window, then read on. And one caveat, this is not legal advice, but to the extent that it makes a legal argument, it only does just that, makes a legal argument. This blog post says nothing of your moral or ethical obligation to pay for damage caused. So, while this blog post does not attempt to answer whether it is right to drive away after you hit someone’s home, it does attempt to answer whether it is legal—assuming you weren’t aiming at the house. (Of course, you probably would be on the green if you had been aiming at the living room since you’re reading this blog post.)

You may be surprised to learn that no appellate court in Minnesota has answered the exact question of whether a golfer is liable for hitting a home with an errant golf shot. You may think the answer is so obvious the question has never been litigated: When somebody causes damage to somebody else’s property, they pay for it. Alone, this is a sound principle.¹ And if I teed a ball up in my front lawn and drove one into my neighbor’s house, I would be liable. However, there is more nuance to this question when dealing with a golfer on a golf course who had no intention of hitting the home. We cannot so easily assume a lack of caselaw means that golfers are obviously always liable. It is equally plausible there are no appellate decisions because golfers are obviously never liable since the homeowners assumed the risk of their home getting hit when they moved onto a golf course. Or an attorney simply costs more than a broken window, who knows?² Minnesota courts have not given us a direct answer to this question, but we are not without any guidance. Minnesota courts have addressed liability for hitting a person with a golf ball, and other states have handled questions of liability for hitting person and property with errant shots.

Assuming the golfer had no intention of hitting a home but simply mishit their ball, the question is whether the golfer is liable for hitting the home. To be liable for negligence, four essential elements must be present: (1) There is a duty of care owed to the injured party, (2) the allegedly negligent party breached that duty, (3) there was damage caused to the injured party, and (4) the breach of duty was the proximate cause of the injury.³ For the sake of this blog, we are already assuming there was (3) damage caused to a home and (4) the golfer’s shot caused that damage. Liability comes down to (1) whether golfers owe a duty to homes adjacent to the golf course and (2) whether accidentally hitting a bad shot is a breach of that duty.

Golfers do have a duty to those on and adjacent to the course to observe the rules and customs of golf.⁴ This duty includes etiquette like not aiming shots too close to homes,⁵ warning those reasonably expected to be in the zone of danger from a shot, and yelling “fore” if a mishit ball is traveling at another person.⁶ This duty does not include never hitting an errant shot though.⁷ For “even the best professional golfers cannot avoid an occasional ‘hook’ or ‘slice.’”⁸ Here, since warning a house that it is in the zone of danger or yelling “fore” after a mishit is futile—the house cannot get up and move out of the way—we are only concerned with whether a golfer negligently aims their shot too close to a home. Based on decisions from other jurisdictions and decisions involving mishit golf balls in Minnesota, it seems a golfer cannot be liable for just hitting a bad shot. Put more eloquently by the Missouri Court of Appeals, “[t]o hold that a golf player was negligent merely because the ball did not travel in a straight line, as intended by him, would be imposing upon him a greater duty of care than the Creator endowed him with faculties to carry out.”⁹

Minnesota has considered whether a golfer is guilty of negligence for hitting another personin Hollinbeck v. Downey.¹⁰ The court held that “[a]ny theory of liability on the part of [a golfer would] have to be predicated upon a jury finding that the [injured party] was in a place of danger.”¹¹ Because driven balls do not always travel straight or as intended, a rather extensive zone of danger may be created.¹² The exact confines of a zone of danger cannot be defined in a sweeping rule applicable to every golfer.¹³ Case-specific factors have to be considered, such as the golfer’s skill,¹⁴ the design of the course,¹⁵ and expectations of the homeowner.¹⁶

Other states such as New York and Ohio have found that a homeowner who deliberately chooses to buy a home adjacent to a golf course “must accept the occasional, concomitant annoyance[]” that a golf ball hits their home.¹⁷ Often, when there is liability to be found for mishit golf balls, it falls on the course for negligent design.¹⁸ A slew of errant shots may eventually spell liability for the golf course, but an individual golfer is generally exempt from liability for hitting a home unless they intended to hit it or aimed too close.

At the end of the day, the courtroom is probably an ill-suited situs for handling minor property damage. However, for the less ethically inclined, it would seem the law imposes no liability for that house you just hit.

* Joe Maney, JD Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law, Class of 2025 (Senior Editor).

1. See Hennessey v. Pyne, 694 A.2d 691, 695–96 (R.I. 1997) (dismissing a battery claim because golfer had no intention of hitting the plaintiff with his shot). ↩︎
2. The average hourly rate for an attorney in Minnesota in 2024 was $305. A lawyer is not going to sue someone in one hour. Joan Feldman, Small Firm Hourly Rates by State and Practice Area, Attorney at Work (Oct. 23, 2024), https://www.attorneyatwork.com/solo-and-small-firm-lawyer-hourly-rates/ [https://perma.cc/NF99-2M5N]. ↩︎
3. Lubbers v. Anderson, 539 N.W.2d 398, 401 (Minn. 1995). ↩︎
4. Page v. Unterreiner, 106 S.W.2d 528, 533 (Mo. Ct. App. 1937). ↩︎
5. See Hennessey, 694 A.2d at 698. ↩︎
6. Ludwikoski v. Kurotsu, 875 F.Supp. 727, 731–32 (D. Kan. 1995); Hollinbeck v. Downey, 113 N.W.2d 9, 12 (Minn. 1962) (citing Miller v. Rollings, 56 So.2d 137, 138 (Fla. 1951)). ↩︎
7. See Rinaldo v. McGovern, 587 N.E.2d 264 (N.Y. 1991) (“the mere fact that a golf ball did not travel in the intended direction does not establish a viable negligence claim”). ↩︎
8. Nussbaum v. Lacopo, 265 N.E.2d 762, 767 (N.Y. 1970). ↩︎
9. Page, 106 S.W.2d at 533. ↩︎
10. Hollinbeck, 113 N.W.2d at 12. ↩︎
11. Id. ↩︎
12. Id. at 11–12 (quoting Berry v. Howe, 208 P.2d 1174, 1177 (Wash. 1949)). ↩︎
13. See id. at 11 (court did not find the plaintiff was conclusively outside the zone of danger of defendant’s shot when at a forty-five-degree angle away from defendant where defendant was a thirty-six handicap and “just a general poor player through all clubs.”); Tenczar v. Indian Pond Country Club, Inc., 199 N.E.3d 420, 424 (Mass. 2022) (experts in case arguing the “safety zone” extends fifteen or eighteen degrees from the center line). ↩︎
14. See Hollinbeck, 113 N.W.2d at 11. ↩︎
15. Ludwikoski, 875 F.Supp. at 732 (finding plaintiff was not within the ambit of danger because they were not on the golf course and were past a perimeter fence and group of trees designed to prevent errant golf balls from leaving the course). ↩︎
16. Curran v. Green Hills Country Club, 101 Cal.Rptr. 158, 161 (Cal. Ct. App. 1972) (“[T]he doctrine of assumption of risk should not be applied with liberality, if it be applicable at all, where the injury takes place on plaintiff’s own property, which in itself is safe and which is rendered dangerous only by invasion of missiles from adjacent land.”);see also Hennessey, 694 A.2d at 698 (providing a list of relevant questions for jury when evaluating whether the golfer breached his duty of care when hitting, including golfer’s awareness of the condo within striking distance, knowledge the condo had been hit before several times, homeowner’s complaints of being hit by golf balls, and golfer’s appreciation of the golfing advantage gained by hitting as close to the house as possible). ↩︎
17. Nussbaum, 265 N.E.2d at 765; see generally Patton v. Westwood Country ClubCo., 247 N.E.2d 761 (Ohio Ct. App. 1969). ↩︎
18. E.g., Patton, 247 N.E.2d 761; accord Tenczar, 199 N.E.3d at 420; Malouf v. Dallas Athletic Country Club, 837 S.W.2d 674 (Tex. Ct. App. 1992); DeSarno v. Jam Golf Mgmt.,LLC, 670 S.E.2d 889 (Ga. Ct. App. 2008). ↩︎