Paralyzed Skier Awarded $14 Million

Trauma Parks...If you build it they will come! Its a lose lose for Snoqualmie.

Even if the jumps are engineered to perfection, a skier or boarder can still over/under shoot and get bent. So even if Snoqualmie correctly designs, builds and inspects a jump your back to square one.

Tough break for the kid but that's the name of the game. You go big, you pay big.

If your gonna huck big jumps you better treat that jump like you wanna make sweet love to it.

What we really have to watch out for here, is setting a precedent that could be used to shut down backcountry access from the resort. In a non-skiing jury's eyes, how is providing access to risky avalanche terrain any different than building a risky jump? The difference, I suppose, is that there is a federal mandate that they not block access to federal land. But when people win cases like this, you have to expect the ski area operators to lean more toward blocking access than granting it. Lose lose, indeed.

New article today on the judgement....

www.seattlest.com/archives/2007/04/10/fo..._wins_14_million.php

I am all for personal responsibility, but at some point the ski area has to say "something is wrong here," and in my opinion the carnage in this case far exceeds an acceptable level of risk and consequence.

Trees and avalanches are a fact of nature, while jumps are man-made. Furthermore, unlike say a highway where accidents occur, the terrain park is by nature designed to increase the risk of an otherwise benign run, to make things more exiting. The question is simply how much artificial risk is acceptable.

Something we all agree on is that many who venture into terrain parks are a danger to themselves. The ski area knows this. It knows people are going to hurt themselves by going off of jumps that they build. Given this knowledge, the ski area could do three things: 1) make the jumps 'safer' to limit the severity of the injuries, 2) have some extra criteria for access to more risky features, 3) ignore the ensuing broken backs and paralysis because it's just the skiers' fault. Choosing #3 alone is pretty heartless, and pretty irresponsible given that the terrain park developer was/is fully aware of both the danger, and the skiers' willingness to subject themselves to it. I doubt that the injuries came as a surprise to anyone, which casts a sick tone over the whole matter...

I think that the question in this case was:
Is it the sole responsibility of the skier to avoid excessively dangerous jumps that have been manufactured by the ski area, or does the ski area share in that responsibility, given direct knowledge and evidence of the risk that it manufactured?

[ps. In contrast to the 'backcountry', the terrain park is in-bounds, and artificially manufactured by the ski area. Because neither of these liabilities hold in the case of a backcountry avalanche, I think it's a huge stretch to suggest that this issue has any similarity to backcountry access. Then again I am not the jury. ]

If this stands it has the potential to be real bad news for BC access from ski areas, all it is going to take is the ski areas insurance provider to bring this case up and ask the ski area if there are any other areas in addition to the terrain park that have a high risk of personal injury...that would logically lead to the BC, and lets be real, ski areas do not make that much money providing access to the BC, so when looking at the increase in their premiums an insurer will most definitely add for BC access, the ski area will have no other choice but to shut it down to save money.

It doesn't matter that you've left the ski areas zone of control, you accessed it using their equipment, and that would, given this case and the cases that are sure to follow, be at least enough to get to trial, and then all bets are off, it doesn't matter what recreational user statutes exist, the ski area is wide open, and that scares insurers, they are not in the business to pay on claims.

I'm all for the European model, huck yourself off anything we don't care, your responsible for your own actions (granted it's easier to do this when you have a cradle to grave social system). Just my two cents...

What we really have to watch out for here, is setting a precedent that could be used to shut down backcountry access from the resort. In a non-skiing jury's eyes, how is providing access to risky avalanche terrain any different than building a risky jump? The difference, I suppose, is that there is a federal mandate that they not block access to federal land. But when people win cases like this, you have to expect the ski area operators to lean more toward blocking access than granting it. Lose lose, indeed.

I think you could be right, If the Alpental patrol was dragging people out of the BC as often as the Central patrol was yarding people out of the terrain park things would be different. The BC to Draft Dodger Ridge is still in the permit area so they aren't really blocking access, there are other ways to access it without using chairlifts or crossing ropelines. Terrian parks are big money makers in the industry now and the people that use them are being marketed heavily because its the cool thing to do now and that won't change anytime soon.