Seattlest: Former Skier Sues the Summit and Wins $14 Million

Margo

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:09:35 -0800

...OUCH! I'm newer to Snowboarding, and I haven't hit any real jumps just yet or rails. People should know that you NEED to, "look before you leap". Ride by the jumps, rails, EVERYTHING before you hit it. Run your hand over it,.. is it smooth? Check the landings, etc. BEFORE you try it. SO what if it takes longer to do it! BE SAFE, be careful, because YOU cannot be replaced. PERIOD. You are ultimately responsible for YOU. I feel horrible for this person, and I hope that in some way he and his Family can find some hope and encouragement during this difficult time.

BobH

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:56:58 -0800

Carrie: No fair: You're basing your comments on ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE of the case, and thus have an ability to reach a reasoned, nuanced opinion that actually has some validity. Sorry, you don't belong in this thread.

Carrie

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:37:31 -0800

It's true the skier was going to fast. But if the jump had a longer landing, the chance of any skier overshooting the landing would be diminished. No jump is guranteed safe. But Kenny was not the first skier to overshoot and land on the flats. The folks at Snoqualmie Pass knew it was a problem but did not address it. Because the skier was going too fast (and did not check out the jump first etc) he was held more than 50% responsible for the accident. But people paying to ski at the pass have the right to expect that accidents are being examined and problem areas are being looked at. And they may also have an expectation that when a huge human-made structure is constructed on the side of the mountain, it is done so with some engineering and/or understanding of the physics behind ski jumps. There were 31 witnesses in this case and a great deal of evidence was presented. Most of it was not contained in the brief press coverage of the event. However as an outdoor lover and a skier who happened to be assigned to be a juror in this trial, after giving up a month of my life to sit in a courtroom and truly examine the evidence and hear all sides, I voted that both the skier and the operators of Snoqualmie Pass had some responsiblity for this accident. It was not an easy case to listen to and it was not an easy decision to make. This case was far more complex than what you read in the paper.

SomeSanityPlease

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:38:16 -0800

Yeah - let's drive a Pinto off a cliff and sue Ford. While tragic, this guy skied too fast and beyond his ability. He hit a jump at such a speed to throw him a ridiculous 37 feet in the air. I happen to know an eyewitness - had he hit the jump at half the speed he was traveling, we wouldn't be reading this. The outcome of this case is ridiculous.

Nathan

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:25:12 -0800

Courtney is absolutely right that you would not sue the person you rear-ended on the freeway. Although if the car you were driving had been improperly designed so that it burst into flames every time it got involved in a minor fender bender, you might sue the car company. And isn't this what Salvini has done? The jury found that he was partly at fault, as they most likely would if I rear-ended another car. But the jury also found that the resort was partially at fault and that the jump was unreasonably dangerous, as I would expect them to find with an unreasonably dangerous car. (The Pinto comes to mind here.) I agree with Courtney that we all assume the risks of our own behavior, but that doesn't give vehicle manufacturers and resort operators carte blanche to ignore safety. Besides, I think we should be careful about second guessing a jury verdict; afterall, it was the jury in this case that was presented with all of the evidence from both sides, not the bloggers.

Courtney

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:03:01 -0800

Gee Seth, what took you so long? I think last time you made this comment it was your own minimal risk of falling off the bleachers at a high school basketball game, correct? You drive a car, right? I'd wager your car insurance is a hell of a lot more expensive than your health insurance (which I'm pretty sure your company subsidizes a huge chunk of) so you'd be better of pissing on drunk drivers and texting while on the freeway types than skiers or snowboarders. That's the problem I'm talking about: the media throws up a headline about some skier being paralyzed and winning $14MM from the resort, when a hell of a lot more people are gravely injured just getting to work every day. These events are few and far between, and they are rare. Those of us who want to undertake these activities should be just as free and encouraged to do so as Americans are to get into their cars and hurl themselves down the freeways day in and day out. If one day you slam into the back of someone's car because you didn't slow down fast enough, you sure as hell aren't going to sue them for worrying how fast you were going behind them.

Seth

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:41:14 -0800

"a discussion regarding personal choice, responsibility for our actions, and the nature of health care in our country" Here's a discussion: why do people who jump off jumps and shit pay the same amount for health care as people like me who don't do anything more dangerous than sometimes lean back too far in our Eames chair?

Courtney

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:23:54 -0800

Yes, all that info was in the article. I know they are claiming the jump wasn't well built. Take it from someone who actually jumps off things, on either skis or a bike: I look at everything before I jump off it. I feel it is my responsibility as a person who wants to do something like that to take the situation into my own hands. I can look at something and say "Wow, that's a short and flat landing. I'm going to pass on this one." I'm sorry, but people simply have to take their own lives into their own hands when it comes to this stuff. If you want to jump things, learn to visually assess jumps and how to understand the ramifications of how something is built. Often, I won't necessarily go off something unless I can watch someone else hit it first. I like to find someone I know who has done it, and watch them and/or follow them off it. If anyone knows who the sponsored snowboarder was that broke their back on that same jump, I would really like to know who that was. Just because someone is sponsored isn't a guarantee that they approached this thing any more sensibly than anyone else--no offense to sponsored athletes out there, I'd just like more info on that scenario.

Kevin

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:16:00 -0800

During the trial at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, "information came out ... that the man who built [the jump] eyeballed it with a Sno-Cat" rather than engineering a design, Connelly said. Engineers and an aeronautics professor from the University of California, Davis, testified that the jump was improperly designed and featured a short landing area, Connelly said, adding that ski jumps are supposed to be sloped so that energy from a vertical jump is transferred into a skier's forward motion on landing. "Going off this jump was the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building," Connelly said. "If you're going to be throwing kids 37 feet in the air, these jumps need to be engineered, designed and constructed properly."

Nathan

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:21:18 -0800

A properly designed and positioned ski jump will have a sloped landing area, transfering the downward energy of the skier into forward momentum. The jump on which Mr. Salvini was injured landed on flat compact snow and ice. A sponsored snowboarder had broken his back on the same jump the week before Mr. Salvini's accident and notified the resort that the jump was unsafe, yet they did nothing. The ski resort's $30 million dollar policy will pay for this verdict, and perhaps next year this resort (and the others insured by AIG) will pay a little more attention to where and how their jumps are set up. If this verdict prevents another young man from spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair, I think that's a good thing.

Dan

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:27:39 -0800

This guy wrote in earlier this week: So a few years back I sprained (later found out it was a fracture) my back riding at snoqualmie in the snowboard park. This was the first year I bought a pass there and was also the first day riding snoqualmie that year. After a few runs I took a extra fast line through the park and hit a series of three decent size jumps realizing in the air that the third jump unlike the others had no landing whatsoever. Ended up missing the whole season because of this shitty jump and the fact that I didn't completely scope out every hit. After a few exchanges of email Snoqualmie refunded me the cost of my pass. The last of the emails included my thoughts on their park crew for that season. The highlights of which "your crew is a bunch of untrained monkeys" and "how about spending $5 on a copy of transworld snowboarding that has some pictures of real jumps". Now I don't usually support people who sue ski resorts because snowboarding in safety land is no fun. But if you are going to build a jump it needs to have the landing to match it.