A lawyer for the family of a 9-year-old boy struck in the head by a golf club at Topgolf in Hillsboro urged jurors Monday to award $34 million in damages, alleging the company failed to protect children at the venue during a 2021 birthday party.
The company never gave the 12 children a required tour of the golfing bays or a safety conversation that their “bay host” is expected to provide, including a warning to stay behind the red line to avoid getting hit by a swinging club, attorney Samuel T. Smith said in his opening statement.
“You cannot expect someone to follow the rules if you aren’t told the rules,” he told an eight-member jury in federal court in Portland.
Henry Thomsen suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when another boy’s club hit him in the forehead, Smith said.
The boy’s parents, Kristina Thomsen, an architect, and David Thomsen, a director of infrastructure for Providence Health & Services, are seeking $4 million in economic damages and $30 million for pain and suffering from Topgolf USA Hillsboro and Topgolf International Inc.
Topgolf, in turn, sued the two men who threw the party for their son, blaming them for inattentiveness.
U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez has set aside more than two weeks for the trial for all the allegations.
Topgolf’s lawyer Heidi L. Mandt argued that the sports facility has clearly marked hitting bays separated by 4-inch-wide, red-painted lines on the floor, as well as signs that warn people to stay behind the red line to avoid getting hit.
A reoccurring audio safety warning also plays on its sound system requesting customers to stay behind the red line, she said.
Mandt said the two men hosting the birthday party – Arthur Hung and Jim Watkins — were responsible for safeguarding the children, not Topgolf.
She said the bay host for their party didn’t provide the safety conversation because Hung had told her that they had been there before and it wasn’t necessary. Hung disputes that occurred.
“Customers cannot leave their common sense and their personal responsibility at the sliding glass doors and blame Topgolf for doing so,” Mandt said. “It was an unfortunate accident caused by Henry Thomsen standing on the mat that he had been warned not to do while another guest had a club in his hand, and the inattentiveness of Arthur Hung and Jim Watkins.”
A lawyer for the two men said the company never gave the pair any instructions that they were expected to manage the birthday party when they signed a contract to rent two bays.
Their lawyer, J. Bradley Lewis, said Topgolf failed to follow its own protocol, requiring a bay tour and safety conversation for all guests before they started to hit golf balls.
“Topgolf gladly took their money and set them free without giving them any useful safety information,” he said. “The dads were flying blind.”
Smith, the lawyer for the Thomsens, said Henry Thomsen and other boys who were party guests crossed the red line in the bays to throw golf balls at a tractor in the field.
An employee intervened at one point telling the children in one of the bays, “you got to get back,” but Henry Thomsen was in the other bay at the time and didn’t hear the admonition, Smith said.
About an hour and 15 minutes into the party, Thomsen crossed the red line into Bay 211 with several other boys, according to court records. He stepped between the ball dispenser in Bay 211 and the hitting mat in the adjacent Bay 212 and then appeared to throw a golf ball into the field area.
He then stepped back from Bay 212 but remained between the southwest corner of Bay 211’s ball dispenser and Bay 212’s hitting mat when a boy swinging a club in Bay 212 struck him in the forehead, according to the family’s lawyers.
Smith used a mock mat on the courtroom floor resembling a golf bay to demonstrate what happened for the jury.
Watkins drove the boy in his car to Providence St. Vincent Hospital, where he was then taken by ambulance to OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital for emergency surgery. He required plates and screws to repair his skull, Smith said.
Thomsen is not the only child to get hit by a golf club at a Topgolf center, according to the family’s lawyer.
Between February 2019 and May 2024, more than 100 people were struck by golf clubs at the six West Coast Topgolf locations, Smith said. Of those, 92% resulted in injuries to the face or head and 70% involved children, he said.
At the Topgolf Hillsboro, which opened in 2016, an employee estimated that someone is struck by a golf club once a month, according to the Thomsen family’s attorney.
Topgolf countered in court filings that 17 injuries involving golf clubs occurred at the Hillsboro site between 2019 and 2024, while guests have logged millions of swings per year at the location.
A review of Topgolf records indicated that in 2013 and 2014, building officials in other states, including Virginia, Arizona and Florida, had warned the company that its floorplan didn’t meet the International Building Code, in part because it lacked a barrier between the golf tee mat and the seating area, according to lawyers representing the Thomsen family.
Topgolf’s prior insurer also recommended that guardrails be installed to provide a physical barrier between the mats and the sitting areas. Years later, the insurer repeated its recommendation, suggesting that a “physical segregation” may reduce injuries associated with people getting struck by walking into the swinging area, according to the Thomsen family lawyers.
“Instead of correcting this phenomenon, they just blame the people who cross the red line,” Smith said.
Lawyers for Thomsen’s family and the fathers hosting the party said Topgolf Hillsboro’s warning signs were placed in awkward locations that weren’t immediately visible to all guests and partially obstructed by televisions mounted on columns between each bay. They said the audio safety warnings also were overshadowed by noise, music and advertisements played.
Henry Thomsen doesn’t remember getting struck by the club, only the pretzel bites from the birthday party and the lights and sirens from the ambulance rushing him to the children’s hospital, Smith said.
He was an energetic 9-year-old who was active in baseball and hockey and liked to do timed-math problem sheets for fun, Smith said.
But since he was hit by the club, he has difficulty multi-tasking, is overwhelmed by lots of stimuli and suffers from anxiety, Smith said.
Even crosstalk at the family dinner table overtaxes him and he must be excused at times, Smith said. He is continuing to play sports but will require tutoring and counseling through middle school, high school and college, the lawyer said.
Smith’s co-counsel, Anne Devlan Foster, called their first witness — Jordan Witko, who worked as the director of operations for Topgolf Hillsboro from Nov. 9, 2021, through this past May.
In response to Foster’s questioning, Witko acknowledged what was on the company’s website that advertised birthday parties for children 17 and under, which read: “Throw an epic birthday party at Topgolf. You bring the kids, we’ll handle everything else.”
— Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, on Bluesky @maxbernstein.bsky.social or on LinkedIn.
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