Ever have the feeling that a few members at your club just really don’t like each other? Maybe it started with a golf match that got too heated, or a card game gone bad. Or maybe it’s just the inevitable conflict of personalities which predictably results from putting any large group of people together in a social setting.
Now, have any of these personality clashes at your club come to blows? Every day, club managers must deal with fights between members, from profanity-laced tirades to outright fisticuffs – and that’s when terms such as “assault” and “battery” begin to be tossed around. No clubs are immune to it: Last year, a San Diego-area club even had to deal with a minister who reportedly was arrested and charged with battery stemming from a game-related fight on its golf course. So, how do you make sense of it all?
First, it is critical to understand the difference between a civil suit and a criminal action. A civil offense involves a lawsuit between individual citizens, often over the recovery of cash damages. In a criminal action, suit is brought against an individual by the government for an alleged violation of a law and is punishable by a court-imposed fine and/or, perhaps more importantly, by jail time. A court in a civil suit cannot impose a prison sentence.
Therefore, when you read that a jury returned a $25,000 verdict in favor of one club member who got his lights punched out by another club member, you are reading about a civil action. When you read about a jury returning a verdict of guilty against that same fight-happy member, and the court imposing a sentence of 30 days imprisonment, you are dealing with a criminal case.
It is also important to understand the difference between the civil and criminal versions of assault and battery. Hang in there — this stuff can get tough. Under civil law, assault is defined as any attempt, or threat, to injure another person, coupled with both an apparent ability to inflict injury and an intentional display of force that makes the victim fear immediate bodily harm. Therefore, civil assault is committed without physical contact. Civil battery is defined as the touching of another person without legal justification or excuse. Therefore, battery necessarily requires physical contact. You also may think of battery as the consummation of an assault. “I’m going to punch you out” may be civil assault; the punch itself may be civil battery.
Under criminal law, a person is guilty of criminal assault if he attempts to injure another person or if he makes a menacing gesture intended to make the person fear for his safety. Note the difference here with civil assault: Civil assault requires a victim to actually fear for his safety, but criminal assault is committed if an act merely is intended to make a person fear for his safety – even if the victim is not actually in fear.
As with civil battery, criminal battery requires unwarranted contact and resulting harm. Criminal battery also requires an examination of the batterer’s criminal intent, known in the law as the individual’s mens rea, Latin for “guilty mind.” Unwarranted contact, plus injury, plus an intent to harm, equals criminal battery.
Now that you have a handle on understanding these issues, what should you consider doing next at your club? At the very least, consider taking some time at your next employee training sessions to talk about assault and battery with your golf professionals, your tennis staff and other members of your team. It is important that they understand both the potential for explosive member-member battles and the best ways to diffuse such situations. In addition, you may want to spend a little time with your club’s attorney to continue to gain guidance over this always-dangerous part of club life.
Ted Curtis is a Professor of Sports Management at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. He may be reached at tcurtis@lynn.edu. This article is intended for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. If legal advice is required, a competent professional should be contacted.
