Golf club facing £300,000 legal bill after being sued by member kicked out for ‘cheating’

A prestigious royal golf club sued by a member who was accused of cheating and kicked out has been left with a court bill of around £300,000.

Rina Rohilla had her membership at the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club – where King Edward VIII was club captain – terminated after she was accused of fiddling her scores.

She was said to have rubbed out pencilled-in numbers on her card after a competition in September 2019 and doctored it to give herself a better result.

But she sued, claiming she was unfairly booted out because she was ‘unpopular’ with some members of a ‘core clique’ at the club, ‘chief among them’ being ladies’ vice-captain Beverley Mayes.

She said the disciplinary process was biased due to a dislike for her among some members, with one previously remarking that ‘her traits/mannerisms/conduct are certainly not as we would want from a member’.

After a trial at Central London County Court, Judge Andrew Holmes said there had been ‘clear bias’ against her, with a ‘clear desire to secure her expulsion’ among some, rendering the disciplinary process ‘the antithesis of fair’.

He ordered her reinstatement and now, following another hearing at the court, has left the club facing lawyers’ bills totalling more than £300,000 for the case.

During the trial in February, the court heard insolvency practitioner Ms Rohilla had joined the club – which gained Royal status by command of King George V in 1926 – in 2003 and was devoted to golf.

Her expulsion from the club stemmed from her participation in the Harare 125 Bowl competition in September 2019, during which she played a round with two fellow lady golfers.

The insolvency practitioner’s score was marked by opponent Eva Haupt and when, after the round, she went to log her score in the computer in the clubhouse, she did so using the scores on Ms Haupt’s card, which turned out to be wrong.

Instead of sixes on holes three and six, the scores had been rubbed out and replaced with fives.

Ms Rohilla recorded the fives and was immediately challenged and accused of making the alteration herself.

She steadfastly denied cheating, but the matter was passed on to the club’s Captain’s Committee and subsequently the General Management Committee (GMC), which terminated her membership.

After an investigation, the club found that she had cheated by altering the scores on the scorecard, which she then entered into the computer.

But in court, her barrister Mr Crow argued that some club members had ‘smelled blood’ after the allegation and assumed her guilt, and that she was subjected to a ‘stitch-up’ to get rid of an unpopular member.

He claimed the decision-making process was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and that Ms Rohilla was not provided a ‘fair opportunity’ to defend herself as she was not given adequate notice of the case against her.

Ruling in her favour, Judge Holmes said the decision to kick her out was a ‘breach of natural justice’ and ‘breach of contract’.

She had not been provided with the full conclusions of the Captains’ Committee before she went before the club’s management committee, he said.

Those conclusions included at least two pieces of evidence which counted against her, but she was not offered an opportunity to ‘respond to those allegations’, he said.

He continued: ‘In addition, the breach of natural justice is founded upon the obvious bias shown against Ms Rohilla by those responsible for investigating the allegation and some of those who took the decision.

‘There was a clear desire to secure Ms Rohilla’s expulsion from the club because of the dislike for her felt by those involved.

‘This was evidenced in the various emails and the failure to consider the arguments that she was seeking to advance in response. The process adopted was the antithesis of fair.

‘At a very early stage, minds were made up and, at least for some, the aim was to secure the expulsion of an unpopular member.’

The judge ordered that Ms Rohilla be reinstated as a member and paid £1,000 damages as well as £1,600 for lost membership fees.

Judge Holmes returned to court this week for a decision on who pays the lawyers’ bills for the marathon dispute, with the club arguing the trial was Ms Rohilla’s fault as it had previously offered to reinstate her.

He said Ms Rohilla was the clear winner of the case, although the amount she gets back from the club to pay her lawyers would be reduced because she did not win on every issue in the case.

Ms Rohilla had initially claimed that some of the dislike against her was as a result of unconscious racial bias, but that claim had been dropped by the end of the trial.

The judge said there had been at trial ‘no evidence to support any suggestion that anyone in the club was motivated in any way by Ms Rohilla’s race’.

He added: ‘The appropriate order is that the defendant pay 75% of the claimant’s costs of the action.

‘That is, in my view, a reasonable and fair proportion of the costs.’

The decision will mean Ms Rohilla gets 75% of her costs once assessed, with about £100,000 up front.

According to court orders, the club’s own budgeted bills for the case were over £200,000, bringing the total cost to the club to more than £300,000.

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