Paralyzed Skier Awarded $14 Million

The ski area lost this case because it built the jump (and didn't react to serious accidents). That constitutes way more liability and responsibility than allowing skiers to leave the ski area boundary to ski the 'backcountry' (quotes b/c it's lift-served).

and lets be real, ski areas do not make that much money providing access to the BC

Um, I thought this was a major selling point for Alpental? (And to a lesser extent Baker, Crystal, Whistler, which are all providing, developing, or extending backcountry access...)

In fact I'd argue that by all indications, lift-served 'backcountry' is the new thing... the writing is on the wall, terrain parks are so 90's... the lift addicts demand a new way to put themselves at risk. :

For everyone's information, what the law requires for inherendly dangerous sports is that the ski area not make it any more dangerous than is the industry practice. That means that the ski area shouldn't be liable unless the jump was somehow constructed/maintained differently than other terrain park jumps across the nation. Speaking from experience, I can say that it wasn't. I used the same jump around the time that the kid injured himself, and my experience was that the jump was the best one in the park that year.

As for the argument that a manmade jump is different than a natural terrain feature, this is true. However, it is undeniable that jumping has always been a part of skiing, and building terrain parks probably makes the overall skiing experience safer for everyone. In addition to the huge demand for them that arose in the '80s, terrain parks take the reckless few who are looking for a thrill, and remove them from the same trail as grandma, grandpa, and little Timmy, where these thrill seekers used to build jumps and then crash into the unwary. That the ski area built the jump does hold them to a slightly higher standard of care, under the law, but not much. By following industry practices, under the law for purveyors of inherently dangerous sports, doing what everyone else does (assuming that what everyone else does isn't unreasonably dangerous) should shield the ski area from liability.

Unfortunately, juries don't always follow the law when making decisions, and such is the case here. No ski area has engineers design jumps (and honestly, it's not like a jump is complicated enough to warrant someone wasting an expensive degree doing highschool mathematics calculations). No ski area has a starting point dictating where to start. No ski area builds jumps such that it's impossible to overshoot the landing. Those were the, so called, safe things Snoq should have done, but failed to do, according to the plaintiff. The law says that Snoq needn't have done any of those things. Yet the jury found Snoq 45% at fault.

The simple fact is that skiing and jumping are inherently dangerous. That there were 15 prior accidents on the jump proves that. Luckily for all of us, the law does not require ski areas to make skiing "safe," else there wouldn't be any ski areas and probably the forest service wouldn't let any of us ski on their/our land either, for fear of lawsuit.

If the jump was no different than most others, then I see how the lawyer's case weakens... I'm surprised that this didn't come up. Or did the professors from California essentially conclude that all jumps everywhere are lethal? :

The engineers - who don't ski - designed an "ideal" jump and proposed that only that type of jump was safe. This jump was designed to accomodate people going any possible speed, and was essentially a Nordic jump built from snow, needing a 120 meter landing ramp. What ski area has enough space to build more than one of these jumps is beyond me, but the total impracticality of the suggestion was lost on the jury. The jury had no skiers on it, and they apparently couldn't distinguish between the nonesense offered by the plaintiff's expert witnesses and reality.

The law says that, for inherently dangerous sports, safety precautions that would change the nature of the sport are not required. Yet all the changes that the plaintiffs proposed would change the nature of terrain park riding.

I can easily imagine that the jury was primarily motivated by pity. Here's a handsome young athlete whose life has been devastated through a simple mistake--it would be hard for anyone to kick him while he is down... makes you wonder if this should have gone to a trial by jury.

the plaintiff's case was based on a negligently designed/constructed/maintained jump - but I used that jump within a week of this kid's accident, and I know for certain that there wasn't anything wrong with it. The kid went too fast and was out of balance, end of story.

I think you're right about this. But doesn't it seem wrong to just let it happen, knowing that it will? Apparently some people do need to be protected from themselves. Of course that's not a law... yet. I mainly wonder what ski areas are able to do to lower the rate of accidents due to unawareness? I don't think that passive, ignorable warnings are enough ( www.summitatsnoqualmie.com/info/winter/park_etiquette.asp ). Maybe they need to man the gates, and require an orientation, extra waiver, wristband, etc.?