I had an entertaining evening recently, discussing with two advocates whose opinions I really respect, golf clubs, lightning and their duties to members insofar as their safety is concerned. This followed a request from a golf pro and given that the danger of lightning is a subject that I have written to two Clubs about previously, firstly Serengeti and recently to Country Club, Johannesburg, I thought it would be an interesting topic.

Consensus was that Clubs are going to lose the vast majority of legal cases that are brought against them but our approach, or our view of how the judicial system would get to those decisions, was quite different. The one advocate felt that I am clearly too much of a liberal – that it was my Wits University background which led to me taking an approach as to what decision a Court will reach when faced with a widow who has to support two children because her husband has just been killed, and a Club that has lots of assets, and probably an insurance policy as well. I think it is a very winnable case, each and every time depending on the facts, no matter what each disclaimer says, and the advocate agreed with me, but said he did not feel that it should be so in law.

What everybody agreed on was however that if Clubs are going to put in some level of protection, they are creating an impression that they are taking care of people, and creating a bigger onus on themselves. In other words, once you put in a lightning system with a hooter, clearly you are taking some responsibility, and once you do that, you are going to have to make sure that you do a proper job. The one advocate said that if he ran a Golf Club, but he admitted that very few people would be interested in being members of such a club, and it certainly would not be regarded in any way as prestigious for members to belong to, he would have no safety shelters at all, no lightning warning systems and a disclaimer that advises people that they must simply decide what they want to do, when they want to do it and the Club will have no responsibility at all. I don’t think most people would be happy to play at such a club and of course it automatically creates an impression of a Club that must have such terrible financial problems that it cannot even afford insurance.

In short, and that would be my advice to any Club if they ask me, is that if you are going to have a lightning system, and I think you must, then you have to make sure you build proper and secure lightning structures around your golf course as well as to ensure that that hooter or siren can be heard anywhere on the golf course so that you do not have some golfers playing a hole where it is not audible, for example once the wind has picked up. Some attorneys, especially those who take a robust litigious route to every case will say it is not necessary, but as Country Club Johannesburg found out, when it lost a case, we all felt that the vast majority of the time the Club will lose the case.