January 21– While the pros continue to sort out the ongoing spate of bizarre golf rules gaffes, and golf watchers hash out the harshest penalty possible for TV viewers who blow the whistle on said pros, there’s more golf-related weirdness happening in the courts of law than on the course.
Theft. First up is the odd item about Blackstone National Golf Club in Sutton, Mass., charging a former beat reporter for the New England Patriots and ex-pro shop worker with stealing about a hundred grand from the course. Kenneth Powers, 49, will face arraignment for larceny January 28 in Uxbridge District Court, according to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Course officials say Powers, whom the same newspaper fired for plagiarism in 2005, was one of only a few persons who had access to the funds in the pro shop he managed. Course owners told police in June that nearly $100,000 was missing from the pro shop during Powers’ tenure, according to the T&G. The club fired Powers in June.
“We want to make it very clear that other people had access to the money,” Powers’ attorney told the publication. “Mr. Powers is confident that he will be exonerated once all the facts are heard.”
Deja vue. Next, in a case of deja vue all over again, a 16-year-old high school student has sued Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club for $3 million after a golf ball he hit on the driving range caromed off a metal pole and struck him in the eye, according to The Oregonian. Alexander Good claimed he lost some vision in his left eye when, as a 15-year-old member of the Liberty H.S. golf team on April 23, 2009, the golf ball hit the pole of a temporary awning course workers had set up to ward off raindrops. Good, who may lose his sight completely in that eye, according to his lawyer, filed suit last Friday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, said the publication.
In a similar case last year, New Hampshire’s Supreme Court ruled against a golfer who tried to blame a course for his bad shot. Back in November, the Granite State’s highest court upheld a lower court’s ruling dismissing charges that Candia Woods Golf Links was negligent when Paul Sanchez II injured himself after hitting a ball that ricocheted off a yardage marker and smacked him in the eye, according to the Boston Globe.
Pumpkin Ridge, by the way, is a favorite stomping ground for the LPGA Tour, which will stage the 2011 Safeway Classic at the North Plains, Ore., site.
AKA Tiger Woods. On the apparently never-ending Tiger Woods watch, a nurse whom Health Center fired for illegally viewing Tiger Woods’ medical records following the golfer’s November 2009 car crash has sued the facility near Orlando, Fla., for defamation, according to the Orlando Sentinel. In the suit, filed Friday in Orange County Court, David M. Rothenberg seeks $400,000 in damages and his old job back, claiming the hospital used circumstantial evidence to fire him.
The most interesting news from the suit must be the part in which Rothenberg claimed Woods used the aliases Ronald Williams and Ernest Smith while a patient at Health Central.
Unplayable lie? In the grizzliest of the recent court cases, a golfer has sued the Fripp Island Resort near Beaufort, S.C., for negligence after he had his right arm torn off and (viewer discretion advised) eaten by an alligator, according to Courthouse News Service. During a round of golf with his son on Oct. 8, 2009, James Wiencek hit his ball near a pond on the 11th hole of Ocean Creek Golf Club. “When the plaintiff reached his right arm towards the ball, without warning, a large, 10-foot long alligator [sprung] from the brackish and dark water and attacked the plaintiff, biting and holding plaintiff’s right arm,” according to the Federal court complaint.
His son rescued Wiencek from the gator, but not before “the alligator tore plaintiff’s right arm off in a violent and vicious manner above the elbow,” CNS quoted the complaint as stating.
Nearby residents had alerted the resort about the animal’s size and aggressive behavior but the defendants “failed to take reasonable action to secure the premises of the golf course and to warn its business invitees, including the plaintiff,” about the danger, the complaint stated. WTOC.com, however, reported that frequent signs warned visitors about alligators. Wildlife officials caught the gator and killed it, which is how they knew it had consumed Wiencek’s arm, according to the news outlet.
(Emily Kay is a regular contributor to New England Golf Monthly. Check her out on the Waggle Room, Boston Golf Examiner, and National Golf Examiner websites. You may also follow Kay on Twitter.)
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