New York: Golf Club Attendant May Sue Co-Employee for “Errant” Swing of Golf Shaft

Applying New York’s rule regarding co-employee immunity—that in order for a co-employee to be shielded from liability, the co-employee must (a) have been acting within the scope of his or her employment and (b) not have been engaged in a willful or intentional tort—a state appellate court held that a country club locker room attendant could proceed with a civil action against the club’s manager where the attendant alleged the manager struck him in the left testicle with a golf club shaft as the two were standing in the locker room area. The court reasoned that since there was no evidence the two had been engaged in horseplay and since the attendant alleged that after the incident, the manager laughed and walked away, there was an adequate showing that the manager may have struck the attendant intentionally. The manager’s statement that at the time he did not feel the attendant had been injured was belied by the fact that the attendant’s testicle had to be surgically removed.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Montgomery v. Hackenburg, 2017 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 1719 (Mar. 9, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 111.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see