Errant Golf Ball at an Indoor Range: Six Years of Experience Is No Defense to Criminal Negligence
A member of an indoor screen golf facility who hit a ball backward during practice — striking a woman in the head 25 meters away in an adjacent stretching zone — has had a criminal fine of ₩2 million upheld on appeal, with the court rejecting the argument that the duty of care depends on being able to see who is nearby. Here are the key points.
Facts
- In June 2025, A was practicing at an indoor screen golf range inside a fitness center in Jung District, Seoul. Instead of hitting the ball toward the forward screen, A struck it backward. The ball traveled approximately 25 meters and hit a woman in her forties in the head while she was using the stretching zone.
- The victim required facial suturing and may be left with permanent scarring.
- A was charged with negligent bodily injury (과실치상).
A’s Defense
- A argued he could not see the victim from his position due to the layout of the facility.
- A also argued that a staff member had opened and propped open an automatic door for ventilation without informing him — and that without that notice, he could not have foreseen the accident.
Court Decision
- Seoul Central District Court (Criminal Division 9-2, Presiding Judge Hwangbo Seung-hyeok) upheld the trial court’s criminal fine of ₩2 million on September 10, 2026.
- The court held that the duty of care for a person practicing golf swings is not conditioned on having visual awareness of a specific person who might be present nearby. Anyone using a golf practice facility must operate on the assumption that unknown persons may be in adjacent spaces, and must exercise caution accordingly.
- On the door argument, the court found that an automatic door is by its nature a passage that opens and closes whenever people move through it. Whether or not A had been notified of the door being propped open, the possibility of someone entering through it was entirely foreseeable.
- The court also highlighted that A had six years of golf experience, had received a screen alert, and had continued practicing swings without confirming the ball’s position on the tee — a failure of basic attentiveness from someone with his level of experience.
- Additional factors weighing against leniency: the victim underwent facial suturing and may have permanent scarring; A had not been forgiven by the victim; and A had made no effort toward remediation or compensation.
Key Takeaways
- The duty of care in a shared indoor sports facility extends beyond what you can directly see. Practitioners must account for the possibility that others may be in adjacent or connected spaces, even if those spaces are not visible from the point of activity.
- A facility’s structural layout — and any failure by staff to inform a user of changes to that layout — does not eliminate the user’s own independent duty to exercise caution before swinging.
- Prior experience with a sport raises, rather than lowers, the expected standard of care. A golfer of six years is held to a higher standard of attentiveness than a complete beginner.
- Failure to check the ball’s position before continuing practice swings, even after receiving a screen alert, reflects a specific and identifiable failure that the court treated as the operative negligent act.
Why This Matters
Indoor sports facilities that combine multiple activity zones in a shared space — golf ranges alongside stretching areas, for example — present foreseeable intersection risks that users cannot simply outsource to the facility’s layout or staffing decisions. This ruling confirms that the user’s own duty of care is independent of what the facility tells them, and that negligence liability follows from failure to exercise that care regardless of visibility. For facility operators, the decision is also a reminder that opening passages to adjacent zones without informing users creates a risk environment that may generate separate civil liability alongside any criminal exposure of individual users.
Article: https://www.lawtimes.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=227737
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