Getting up in the morning can sometimes seem like a bad idea. You might scare the living daylights out of yourself when you first look in the mirror, choke on mouthwash, cut yourself shaving, slip on a bar of soap in the shower, pinch yourself while zipping up your pants, bump your head while trying to find your shoes, trip over the laces and fall down the stairs, overfill your coffee cup and scald yourself, then open the front door and get smacked in the forehead by an airborne newspaper.
Life is full of hazards. If we’re not completely obtuse, we learn from experience to pay attention, exercise caution and anticipate obstacles and pitfalls.
Some of life’s hazards are clearly marked; some aren’t. Road signs warn us of blind curves, low shoulders and falling rocks. The highway departments seem to think that the warnings suffice and that they have no obligation to straighten the curves, raise the shoulders and remove the rocks the minute they fall.
Golf courses also identify hazards, but not all of them apparently.
For instance, James Grinestaff and his wife Tracey had to find out the hard way that it's not prudent to drive a golf cart at high speed down a slippery incline. Did they not know that operating a motorized vehicle in such a manner might result in accident and injury?
Having filed suit, two years after the incident, against the Meadia Heights Golf Club in Lancaster (and the golf cart maker and merchant), the Grinestaffs seem to be learning another hard lesson: that you can't always blame someone else for your mistakes and expect them to pay for the consequences.
“James A. Grinestaff was traveling too fast for conditions,” the defendants responded, and “failed to obey posted notices, signs, and other warnings.” That response was filed about a year ago and no action has been taken in the suit in the past year.
In short, “Plaintiff’s injuries and damages, if any, were caused solely and directly as a result of the negligence, carelessness, and recklessness of the plaintiff.”
Ouch! That hurts. How the case ends might hurt even more.