Opinion ID: 2518817
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Application of the Primary Assumption of Risk Doctrine

Text: The lesson to be drawn from Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296, 11 Cal. Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696, and its progeny, as well as the weight of authority in sister states, is that the primary assumption of risk doctrine should be applied to golf. Thus, we hold that golfers have a limited duty of care to other players, breached only if they intentionally injure them or engage in conduct that is so reckless as to be totally outside the range of the ordinary activity involved in the sport. (Id. at p. 320, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696, fn. omitted.) The Court of Appeal relied too heavily on one of golfs rules of etiquette involving safety. Golfs first rule of etiquette provides that [p]layers should ensure that no one is standing close by or in a position to be hit by the club, the ball or any stones, pebbles, twigs or the like when they make a stroke or practice swing. [9] (USGA, The Rules of Golf, supra, § 1, Etiquette, p. 1.) The Court of concluded that [t]his duty included the duty to ascertain Shin's whereabouts before hitting the ball. Rules of etiquette govern socially acceptable behavior. [10] The sanction for a violation of a rule of etiquette is social disapproval, not legal liability. This is true, generally, of the violation of the rules of a game. The cases have recognized that, [in sports like football or baseball], even when a participant's conduct violates a rule of the game and may subject the violator to internal sanctions prescribed by the sport itself, imposition of legal liability for such conduct might well alter fundamentally the nature of the sport by deterring participants from vigorously engaging in activity that falls close to, but on the permissible side of, a prescribed rule. ( Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 318-319, 11 Cal.Rptr.2d 2, 834 P.2d 696; see Avila, supra, 38 Cal.4th at p. 165, 41 Cal.Rptr.3d 299, 131 P.3d 383.)