Black and White: Snowboarding - even riskier than you think!

Snowboarders, like skiers, won’t have any luck recovering money from ski area operators if they’re injured in collisions on the slopes, according to one recent case.

A woman went to a ski center to take part in a snowboarding class. After she and her classmates rode the ski lift to the top of the trail, an instructor told them all to take a run to warm up  and then to meet at the bottom to begin their lessons.

As the woman came around a bend, she saw the instructor stopped below her. To his left, the trail ended and a wooded area began. To the right, the trail was wide open.

Even though the woman had been taking lessons for some time, she was not yet adept at making right-hand turns on the snowboard. When she tried, she crashed into the instructor and suffered injuries.

She then sued the ski area operator and the instructor for negligence.

She ended up recovering nothing, however, because a judge ruled that her suit was barred by a Massachusetts law which absolves ski areas and their employees from any responsibility for skiers’ collisions occurring on the slopes.

“Although the plaintiff was not strictly a skier,” the judge said, “the legislature chose to define ‘skier’ to include those who ride the tramways on the ski slopes even where there is no skiing available, thus suggesting an intent for the term to be read broadly. It is true that the statute makes no express reference to snowboarding, but that is no surprise: when the statute was last amended in 1978, snowboarding was a novel sport.”

“Reading the statute as a whole in light of the purpose that the legislature

sought to achieve,” the judge continued, “this Court has no difficulty in concluding that snowboarding falls within the definition of ‘skiing.’ Although they are not strictly the same, the two sports bear substantial similarities. Both activities occur on the same trails. Both snowboarders and skiers used the same ski lifts and pay the same ticket price. Both activities are inherently risky.”

“The major difference between them,” said the judge, “is that a snowboarder uses a single wide board on which both feet are planted, whereas a skier uses two narrow boards worn on each foot. That is a difference without any significance in the context of this case, however. Although that may change the way in which the user maneuvers himself down the hill, it does not necessarily affect the level of control that the user exercises over his or her direction and speed.

“[I]t is not unreasonable,” the judge noted, “to require snowboarders, like skiers, to maintain control and to avoid colliding with others who are using the same trail.

“This Court’s conclusion that the statute applies to snowboarding,” the judge concluded, “makes particularly good sense given the growing popularity of the sport. Nowadays ski areas are ore often dominated by snow boarders; if they could sue for collisions occurring on the ski trails, insurance costs to ski operators would increase substantially, in direct derogation of the legislature’s intent. …

“[Further,] to impose more responsibility for his or her own safety on a skier than on a snowboarder does not accord with common sense.”

- Paul Lamoureux

Image by neal_mcquaid, via Flickr.