[Photo: Helmut Hess]
There’s a headline I didn’t expect to write when I woke up this morning. Unfortunately for golfer Jackson Shelton, from Mesa in California, life is full of surprises.
According to The Mesa Tribune, the now legal saga began back on Valentine’s Day, when Shelton was practising on the driving range at Dobson Ranch Golf Course, a local municipal golf course in the Mesa area. That’s when a golfer adjacent to him stuck a poor shot that ricocheted off a net pole and back into Shelton’s groin. Shelton collapsed in pain and was taken to Banner Desert Medical Center with “excruciating left scrotal pain [on a scale of 10 out of 10], hypertension and tachycardia” according to suit he has not filed in civil court.
“A scrotal ultrasound confirmed a ruptured left testicle with absent arterial and venous flow and a large intrascrotal haemorrhage,” attorney Thomas Richardson explained in the suit.
The ruptured testicle required surgical repair and resulted in various follow-up visits, including one on April 10 that deemed Shelton’s testosterone levels to be lower than normal for a male his age. The suit alleges that Shelton’s medical bills totalled more than $US41,000, while he was also unable to earn about $US5,600 per month in income working for his family’s agriculture business while recovering from the injury. On top of the monetary damages, the suit also claims Shelton suffered “severe pain, suffering, humiliation and anxiety as a result of permanent genitourinary injury sustained at young age”.
The driving range pole at Dobson Ranch Golf Course [Photo: Attorney Thomas Richardson]
The Sheltons are seeking a total of $US5 million ($A7 million) in damages from the city of Mesa and Paradigm Golf Group, the private contractor hired by the city to manage Dobson Ranch Golf Course.
“The City of Mesa, Dobson Ranch Golf Course, and Paradigm Golf Group allowed an unreasonably dangerous condition to remain on the premise,” Richardson alleges. “The condition was the location of the first pole securing the net. The pole was positioned too close to the golf mats… with a 45-degree angle of people using the mats for target practice.”
The suit claims that the driving range lacked adequate safeguards such as bay separation, shielding and visible warnings.
“A driving range is, by nature, a facility where high-velocity projectiles are launched continuously in a confined area,” Richardson said. “The foreseeable and known risk that a ball will strike a rigid vertical pole and ricochet back toward patrons is precisely the kind of hazard that reasonable design and operation are intended to eliminate… The ricochet and resulting testicular rupture were a direct, foreseeable consequence of the dangerous condition respondents created and tolerated.”
Where the blame truly lies is for the California civil court system to decide. For the rest of us, consider this your annual reminder to always – whether on the range or on the tee, whether your friend is sending you hilarious reels or your favourite winger just scored – to always keep your head up and on a swivel.
