by Justice William W. Bedsworth

Well, I think I’ve finally figured out how to get rich.

This was important to me. I wanted desperately to be rich.

That’s why I joined the District Attorney’s office after law school. And then, when I realized the DA’s office actually kept the evidence locker locked, that’s why I changed to a career on the bench. These are well-known paths to fabulous wealth.

Yet somehow the big score eluded me. I don’t know whether it was because I bought my Qwik-Picks at the wrong mini-mart, bet too many nine-game parlays, or backed the wrong cold fusion start-up, but one way or another, that condo in St. Tropez stayed juuuuuuuust out of my reach.¹

Until now. Ironically, now that I don’t need it, I’ve come up with the idea that would make me so much money: I could buy Greenland from Donald Trump.

I don’t need the idea now because I’m retired. They tell me this means my income is fixed. I’m really glad to hear that. I’ve dealt with a broken income for way too long. There have been so many things I couldn’t buy. It’s nice now to hear that it’s fixed, but I really wish they could have done it earlier.

Nonetheless, altruism being one of my most conspicuous character traits, I offer it up to you, dear reader.²

In researching a different point of law, I ran across a newspaper story in which I read, “An investment banker who took a golf ball between the eyes during a company outing is suing a colleague for $3 million.” The light began to dawn on my dreams of wealth.

According to the internet,³ “Biff Timberline,⁴ who doesn’t play golf, was knocked unconscious as he sipped a drink fifteen-to-twenty yards from the course on the patio of the Rockaway Hunting Club⁵ in Lawrence, New York. Timberline is suing Elon Buffet, 33, a senior vice-president and bond trader at [the huge, highly respected investment bank where they both worked].”

I found this story very disturbing. How in hell does a thirty-three-year-old get to be a senior vice-president at a huge, highly respected investment bank? What is the world coming to? Thank God I didn’t become rich previously; I might have bought bonds from this mere pup and been wiped out while he was out shanking four-irons somewhere.

But I digress. I’m very concerned about Mr. Timberline’s condition. He was apparently VERY badly injured, since he’s suing the senior vice-president pup for $3 million. That is, to use the technical legal term, “a lotta owee.”

The legal issue is whether sitting on the patio of the golf club constitutes assumption of the risk—a concept firmly entrenched with respect to golfers but apparently not as clear with regard to drink-sippers who don’t even play the game and are only there to kiss up to the boss.

The senior vice-president pup’s lawyer says, “When it comes to golf cases, the law is clear: errant golf shots are not negligent.”

I’m not sure, but he may have a point here. I can attest, based on extensive testing, that errant golf shots, far from reflecting negligence, can be the result of some of the most careful, painstaking, hypertensive, muscle-knotting, finger-numbing, brain-herniating concentration in the history of western civilization.

This is not theory, this is fact. I have hit shots after concentrating on them so hard that if I had been a Vulcan the ball probably would have vaporized and reappeared in a parallel universe inhabited only by Studebaker transmissions. The result of this nonpareil concentration has been a history of golf scores that look like zip codes. And the aforementioned walks in the woods.

So I am distressed that the case may go to trial. Apparently the summary judgment motion was denied on the basis that Mr. Buffet didn’t yell “Fore!”

The flaw in that reasoning is that every golfer I’ve ever seen⁶ reacts in one of two equally non-productive ways to hearing someone shout “Fore!” Either she ducks her head about two inches into her shoulders, which has no appreciable effect whatsoever on the likelihood of improving the outcome. Or he looks up to see if he can view the offending ball, which, of course, only makes things worse.

It pains me to see business colleagues going to court over such things. But $3 million worth of owee is nothing to be sneezed at. This is not something to be resolved by a handshake, an apology, and a tip on where to go for a little unregulated insider trading.

And a quick look through the list of golf course injury cases turned up in a cursory keyword search suggests golf courses are only marginally safer than Navy firing ranges. These things pop up more often than the Angels.

I knew people got hit by shots all the time—I’ve been hit four or five times myself—but these were people on the golf course. People on the patio?!?!

One of my favorite Orange County restaurants, O’Neill’s, is located on a golf course. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting on their patio overlooking the 18th green. It had never occurred to me that there might be another golfer as bad as me on the course—bad enough to perhaps drop a Titleist into my tri-tip Cobb Salad.⁷

Now I realize there’s a business niche out there. A big niche.⁸ Golf being so dangerous, not just to players but also to spectators, drink sippers, and people who just dropped by for a salad and a view, there’s a market for . . . drumroll please . . . wait for it . . . Golf Course Protective Gear.

Stop reading and start incorporating.

Your company will sell eyeglasses—sunglasses and corrective lenses–with tiny little airbags in the nosepiece. You sell hats with airbags. Golf shirts with padded shoulders. Earrings with motion detectors and loud recorded voices that shout, “Down, you fool, get down,” at decibel levels that will warn people in three neighboring counties.

The market is immense. Not just people like me who still wear masks into sporting event crowds.⁹ Lots of people.

Golfers will buy them. Golfers’ spouses. Any golf course with a patio close to the course will be passing them out to patrons. Insurance companies will require their golfing clients to buy your equipment or waive coverage for Titleist Forehead.

The marketing will be frighteningly easy. Crossovers with Oakley and Nike and Kay’s Jewelers. Advertising posters showing the forlorn remnants of a family—Mom, Junior, and Sis, tears rolling down their cheeks, the family dog prostrate beside them—that say, “Daddy was just sitting on the patio.” You’ll need six accountants to figure out how much money is in your wallet at any given time.

I give this to you because you’ve been a loyal reader. No, that’s not an accusation of recidivism. I just mean you’ve read 1400 words to get here and that must have been out of loyalty. What other possible reason is there for reading my stuff now that you don’t have to worry about appearing before me?

You’ll be rich as Croesus. You’ll make so much money they won’t have to fix your income.

You’re welcome.

BEDS NOTES

1. Actually, my reach couldn’t handle a condo in St. Paul, much less St. Tropez. In St. Tropez, I probably couldn’t afford a condom.
2. This “dear reader” thing is an antiquated trope supposed to personalize the writer-reader relationship. I use it here not because I’m fond of antiquated tropes but because, with my readership, I figure you—whoever you are—may actually be my only reader this month.
3. And, in post-factual Twenty-First Century America, it no longer matters whether things are true or false, as long as they’re on the internet.
4. I’m changing the names here, even though I don’t have to. I am no longer governed by the judicial restriction that forbids commentary on pending cases, but I feel the universal acclaim for my massive intellect might still cause my thoughts about it to prejudice one side or the other.
5. If you’re wondering why the golf course is called a Hunting Club, you’ve never played golf with me. I’ve spent more time in the woods than John Muir.
6. And I’ve been playing since Caesar was a border guard.
7. Okay, a little literary license here. It would take an inconceivably bad shot to reach the patio at O’Neill’s. Even for me. And I’m temporarily hors de combat, so there’s nobody likely to put you in danger there.
8. Are there big niches?
9. Looking forward to not having to wear one to Angel games this year. Place’ll probably have an average attendance comparable to the patio at O’Neill’s.

William W. Bedsworth was an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal until his retirement in October 2024. He's written this column for over forty years, largely just to get it out of his system. A Criminal Waste of Space won Best Column in California in 2019 from the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA). His last book, Lawyers, Gubs, and Monkeys, can be obtained through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Vandeplas Publishing. He can be contacted at heybeds@outlook.com.