Usually (in USA) all customers are presented an acknowledgement/waiver at the door that spells out all the risks involved in the activity. Typically, to be permitted into the activity area you have to sign this document stating that you acknowledge the risks, and knowingly waive (discard) your right to sue the operator if you hurt yourself.
These are mostly foolproof in transferring liability to the customer but they're sometimes phrased to imply you can't sue the operator if anything at all bad happens, which is usually not true - it's usually not possible to waive gross negligence. The particulars of what can and can't be waived vary state by state, in the USA.
And yes, they usually carry insurance against such things, which is typically priced according to the strength of the waiver and lack of negligence on-site.
Injuries at such waiver-gated locations are usually not business-ending or Top Golf never would have taken off the way it did... but at Top Golf scale you can be sure they have retained really good lawyers.
Does that mean if someone gets injured and they try to file a lawsuit, the clerk laughs in their face, and tells them to go away, before the defendant incurs any costs at all?
Does it mean that the judge dismisses the case after only five figures of initial legal costs by defendant?
Does it mean probably a settlement? (And maybe the settlement is smaller because the victim did sign something?)
Does the victim signing something hardly matter, because they can show some other legal principle was in play (e.g., something involving negligence or recklessness, or some other law violated)?
Does insurance cover it, and if so, what happens to rates or the policy continuing to exist?
There's so many variables in play that it's difficult to speak universally on it. Every case is unique, there is relevant case law, different state laws, etc. Everything you said is a possibility - I would say off the cuff that it generally hinges on the scale of negligence and harm - consider these the X and Y axes of a graph where the Z axis is whether the clerk laughs at you, whether a judge dismisses it pre-trial, whether it goes to trial, if a settlement can be negotiated. Die or lose a limb? Stakes go up for sure.
Sometimes insurance will pay all the legal/settlement costs, sometimes they won't, sometimes a business will have to negotiate to avoid a rate hike (we did x, y, and z to avoid this liability and minimize the settlement) and sometimes the insurance policy does vanish.
> Typically, to be permitted into the activity area you have to sign this document stating that you acknowledge the risks, and knowingly waive (discard) your right to sue the operator if you hurt yourself.
Sometimes without being given the opportunity to read the document, too! I've literally had these waivers put on computer screens with timers on them that would time out before you could read it, assuming a reasonable reading speed.
I really wish someone could standardize such a document, like how the GPL is. "Oh, the Public Death Waiver v2? I'm quite familiar with that." easy signature Of course, this will never happen, as what would put bread on lawyers' barren tables, otherwise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_risk