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Happy Gilmore Golf Shot Lawsuit: Is Happy Gilmore Shot Illegal?

by Jon Azpiri | November 25, 2009 at 10:28 am

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More than a few golfers have tried a 'Happy Gilmore golf swing,' a running golf shot popularized by the 1996 Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore. One judge in Canada doesn't think the Happy Gilmore golf swing is very funny. Justice Arthur J. LeBlanc recently ruled in a lawsuit where a Nova Scotia man was injured by a fellow golfer who hit him in the wrist with an errant Happy Gilmore golf shot.

LeBlanc ruled that Travis Hayter hit Alan Bezanson with a Happy Gilmore shot and ordered Hayter to pay $227,500.

LeBlanc mentioned the Happy Gilmore shot in his ruling.

I am convinced that the “Happy Gilmore” shot,” wrote Judge Le Blanc in his decision, “would have been less controllable than a normal tee shot, both because it involved a run-up to the ball (rather than an aimed shot from a stationary position) and because the defendant had been drinking throughout the day.”

As LeBlanc mentioned, the Travis Hayter-Alan Bezanson lawsuit was about more than the Happy Gilmore shot. The lawsuit revealed that the golfers brought along more than two dozen beers, a bottle of tequila, and marijuana, things that might have had been more of a factor than the Happy Gilmore shot.

One empathizes with the suffering caused by this errant shot, and won’t quibble with the decision to award financial compensation. But here’s where Judge LeBlanc strayed. He should not have ruled on whether imitating Happy Gilmore is dangerous or not. Rather, the substantive issue here should be whether swinging a golf club while intoxicated during a bachelor party is negligence. According to the court testimony, the defendant’s regular golf swing was no better, arguably, it was worse, than his run-and-gun swing.

Here are the Happy Gilmore golf shot court ruling.