Kenny Salvini, a 23-year-old athlete, was paralyzed as a result of using a defectively designed, constructed and maintained ski jump in the terrain park at Snoqualmie Summit. This March, the Honorable Laura Inveen presided over a King County jury that returned a $31-million verdict against the ski resort, with a 55% reduction for the inherent risks of the sport. Evidence presented during the five-week trial revealed that the ski resort had not met its duty to properly construct the jump or to respond to notice that numerous skiers were being injured on the jump before Salvini’s accident.
Skiing is both a passion and a pastime for many Washingtonians. Recog-nizing the need to protect ski resorts from lawsuits arising solely from the natural risks of the sport of skiing, the Legislature enacted a statutory scheme that immunizes resorts from those risks that are inherent and unavoidable.
At the same time, skiers are the resorts’ customers, and therefore, business invitees. The Legislature recognized this special relationship and left intact the resort’s obligation to maintain its grounds in a reasonably safe condition. The result is RCW § 79A.45.030, which places responsibilities on both the ski resort and the skier.
This statute states: “A person shall be the sole judge of his or her ability to negotiate any trail, run, or uphill track and no action shall be maintained against any operator by reason of the condition of the track, trail, or run unless the condition results from the negligence of the operator.”1 Under this statute, ski resorts still owe their customers the highest duty of care.2
In this capacity, the resort has an obligation to discover dangerous conditions and repair any dangerous condition found. As stated by the Washington Supreme Court in Scott, “The operator owes a duty to a skier to discover dangerous conditions through reasonable inspection, and repair that condition or warn the invitees, unless it is known or obvious.”3 The bottom line — “ski resorts owe a duty to skiers who are business invitees, to provide ‘reasonably safe facilities.’”4 The resorts are, therefore, prohibited from altering the natural terrain in such a way that creates a hazard.
Salvini v. Ski Lifts, Inc. involved a situation in which the resort altered the terrain by constructing a large tabletop jump. It had a short landing zone at the base of a slope in front of a flat area. This created an extremely hazardous situation for skiers using the jump.
The plaintiff, Kenny Salvini, grew up in Washington and was a tremendous athlete and very experienced skier, learning at age 4. He attended Central Washington University where he was team captain and an outstanding wrestler on the school’s NCAA team. Only a few months after graduation, he went along with his father and family friends to the Summit at Snoqualmie for night skiing.
After spending some time at Alpental, Kenny and the group headed over to Summit Central where the resort has one of its two terrain parks, a portion of the resort consisting of man-made ski jumps. These terrain parks are relatively new, beginning sometime in the 1980s, but only becoming popular within the last 10 years.
During the 2003–04 ski season, the resort constructed the large tabletop jump at the base of a long intermediate slope called the Bonanza Face. Beyond the jump landing area, the slope of the mountain was relatively flat, no more than five degrees. This was the tabletop jump that Kenny was injured on.
This jump was not engineered or designed. No form of mathematics, drafting or science was used. The process for its construction consisted solely of employees of the resort’s grooming department eyeballing the dimensions of the feature and piling snow until it looked about right. While this process might work for a small jump, this feature ended up being 30-feet tall. In essence, the jump would send a skier over a three-story house and across the length of an average lot.
From watching the Olympics and ski or snowboard competitions, people are familiar with the cardinal rules of jump design; a properly designed jump must take into account the foreseeable speeds of skiers and ensure that the skier lands on the landing slope, not on the flat beyond the landing area. Both Olympic and competition jumps are, in fact, built to internationally accepted design standards. As taught in high school physics, the force a body will absorb from landing on a flat area is much more significant than the force a body will absorb landing on a slope.
In this case, the landing ramp was much too short and the jump was placed poorly — immediately in front of a flat area. Prior to Kenny’s injury, numerous other skiers were injured when landing beyond this shortened landing area on the flat. There had been 44 reported injury accidents on the jump before Kenny’s accident, but the jump was never closed or evaluated.
At trial, facts of 15 of the prior incidents were admitted into evidence, showing that a skier or snowboarder was injured due to landing beyond the landing area. One of those individuals was a sponsored snowboarder who, while lying on a stretcher waiting for transportation to a local hospital by ambulance, expressly told resort representatives that the landing ramp was too short.
When Kenny entered the terrain park on February 11, 2004, he had no idea that the resort was experiencing these serious problems. More importantly, the resort had not taken any steps to close the jump for evaluation or redesign.
Kenny used the jump, landed just beyond the landing slope and suffered one of the most serious injuries imaginable — permanent quadriplegia. Kenny sued the Summit at Snoqualmie for its negligence in constructing and keeping open this defectively designed and ultra-hazardous jump.
After a five-week trial, the jury returned a verdict for more than $31 million, finding that the injury was due to a combination of the inherent risks of the sport (55%) and the resort’s negligence (45%). Although the resort was insured for more than this amount, the result hopefully will affect both jump design and risk management practices.
Just as the Legislature envisioned, the statutory scheme allocated responsibility between both parties. While the resort was not responsible for the portion of the injury caused by the inherent risks of skiing, it was held responsible for its own negligence. Resorts are not charged with making the sport risk-free. However, resorts cannot increase those risks beyond the risks inherent in the sport.
n
James W. Beck is an attorney with Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell, Malanca, Peterson, and Daheim. His practice focuses on personal injury, civil rights, business torts and all other forms of plaintiffs’ litigation. He can be reached at 253-620-6402 or jbeck@gth-law.com.
John R. “Jack” Connelly, Jr. is an attorney practicing with the Law Offices of John R. Connelly, Jr. His practice is dedicated to representing plaintiffs in civil rights litigation, governmental and professional liability litigation, personal injury and wrongful death cases, product liability, highway design and sports law. He can be reached at 253-593-5100 or jconnelly@connelly-law.com.
Connelly and Beck were trial counsel for the plaintiffs in Salvini v. Ski Lifts, Inc.
- 1 RCW § 79A.45.030(4).
- 2 Scott v. Pacific West Mountain Resort, 119 Wn.2d 484, 500, 834 P.2d 6 (1992) (“A skier is a business invitee of the ski area operator.”).
- 3 Id.
- 4 Brown v. Stevens Pass, Inc., 97 Wn. App. 519, 524, 984 P.2d 448 (1999) (quoting Scott, 119 Wn.2d at 502).
