$675K Settlement in Snowmass Ski Accident Case

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

A.S. was skiing on Sandy Park, an intermediate ski trail at Snowmass Resort at 2:20 PM on Thursday, March 1, 2018.
Cohen was uphill of A.S., flew over a roll and took A.S. out. In the Collision Report Form, ski patrol quoted A.S. at the
scene immediately after the collision saying “I got hit in the back.”

A.S. sustained multiple right-sided rib fractures, thoracic bleeding and collapsed lung (hemopneumothorax), a right
clavicular displaced fracture, and associated pulmonary injury. He spent four days in Aspen Valley Hospital, all in ICU.
Aspen Valley Hospital could not manage the hemopneumothorax and emergently transferred him to St. Anthony
Hospital in Lakewood, CO. He would spend an additional twenty-one days there.

A lawsuit was filed by Chalat Hatten & Banker, but the claims were settled before trial for $675,000.
Partner Russell Hatten was the lead attorney on the case.

$300K Settlement in Reckless Skiing Accident

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

A group of co-workers went on a ski trip; P.B. was the least experienced of the group. One in the group found delight in knocking down other skiers and recording it on a GoPro. When the jokester hit P.B., the collision broke his shoulder.

Final diagnosis was a fractured humeral head requiring surgery. P.B. lost about a week of wages, feared retaliation
since the hitter was a superintendent at the police department where P.B. worked.

Partner Evan Banker represented P.B. in this matter and achieved a $300K settlement on his behalf.

Past results are not a guarantee of future results.

$305,000 Settlement in Steamboat Ski Collision Case

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

Blue skies on Heavenly Days at Steamboat one March morning in 2019. Our client, an 85 year-old-husband and past-president of Steamboat Ski Corps in the 80s, was skiing with a friend. Another skier ran into him from behind, causing a brain bleed. Our client was airlifted for brain bleed to Anschutz, ICU, and then transferred to neurology after for four days. Client is only a moderate skier now, as he needs to be very careful when undertaking physical activity.

Partner Evan Banker represented our client in this matter and achieved a $305,000 settlement on his behalf.

Past results are not a guarantee of future results.

$303K Settlement in Copper Mountain Ski Collision Case

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

Our client, an Orthopedic Surgeon, was struck from behind by an out of control skier on Rhapsody Run at Copper Mountain on 11/24/19. Client had slowed for a “slow zone” and described the collision as being “hit by a truck.” Client suffered multiple fractures and was hospitalized for 6 days at St. Anthony’s. He lost consciousness and suffered multiple fractures including ribs and a separated clavicle which required surgical repair. The accident prevented our client from returning to his busy orthopedic practice for several weeks.

Our client was represented by partner Jim Chalat. Jim secured a $303K settlement on his behalf.

Past results are not a guarantee of future results.

$307,500 Settlement for Skier Injured at Aspen

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

Our client was skiing Lower Ruthie’s Run at Aspen when he was hit in the back by the defendant, who was skiing with his children, possible chasing them. The collision resulted in injuries including left rotator cuff tear, broken ribs and casting of left hand.

Partner Russell Hatten represented our client in this matter and achieved a $307,500 settlement on his behalf.

Past results are not a guarantee of future results.

Skiing or Snowboarding Accident: What You Need to Know

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

Skiing and snowboarding accidents can often be frightening and shocking. And in the moments following, you may not know what to do. Because of the stressful nature of a skiing accident, it’s important to know the facts, and to know what to do if you are involved in a collision.

SKI ACCIDENT STATISTICS

During the 2019-2020 season, 51 million total skiers and snowboarders hit the slopes according to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA). The NSAA also reports that there were 29 catastrophic injuries and 42 fatalities in the United States during the 2019-2020 winter ski season. This translates to a fatality rate of less than one death per 1 million skier visits (SV), or 0.81 fatalities per 1 million sv.

In Colorado, the ordinary rate of ski accidents requiring at least minimal care is about 2.5 per 1,000 skier visits. Serious injuries requiring at least an emergency room visit are about 1 per 1,000sv and critical care and deaths are about .25/1,000sv. So on a typical day at Telluride, for example, if there are a total of 1,000 guests ski patrol can expect to record 2-3 accidents.

While catastrophic or fatal injuries are uncommon, skiing accidents or collisions are not. And even though lower ability and less experienced skiers are injured about 4x the rate of advanced recreational skiers and snowboarders, avid skiers and boarders are not free from the inherent dangers of the sport. 

COLORADO SKI LAW

Under the Colorado Ski Safety Act, established in 1979 by the Colorado state legislature, every skier and snowboarder who hits the slopes in Colorado assumes the risk of any injury resulting from any of the inherent dangers and risks of skiing. The law also states each skier has its own legal responsibilities, including knowing the range of his or her own ability and to ski within the limits of such ability. In addition, each skier has the duty to maintain control of his speed and course at all times when skiing and to maintain a proper lookout to be able to avoid other skiers and objects.

Except when extraordinary circumstances are involved, a suit for a Colorado ski accident must be filed within two years of the accident. However, we strongly encourage victims of a ski accident to act promptly because many ski area employees are seasonal and are not U.S. citizens. The earlier our ski injury lawyers can secure all the relevant evidence and testimony, the stronger your case becomes.

WHAT IS A SKI COLLISION CASE?

Skiing is not a contact sport and being blindsided by another skier or snowboarder is not an inherent risk under either Colorado or Utah law. Colorado law presumes that the uphill skier or boarder is at fault in a skiing accident, because the overtaking skier has the primary duty to avoid the skier below. In Utah, skiers are required to exercise “reasonable care” to avoid collisions. Usually, this also means the uphill skier must yield to skiers below.

Thus, one of the key issues in any skier/skier case is who was the uphill or overtaking skier. The nature of the injury often gives substantial clues as to how the ski accident occurred, the speed at which the skiers were skiing, and the relative angles to each other.

All skiers are under a general duty to ski cautiously, within their ability and to maintain control and a proper lookout. If a skier fails to ski in control or to maintain a lookout, the skier is negligent and responsible for the injuries and damages that result from the collision

WHAT SHOULD I DO IF I WAS INJURED IN A SKIING ACCIDENT?

Even though most take their duties seriously, reckless and negligent behavior of other skiers and snowboarders is still very common and a major cause of accidents on the mountain. Use the following steps as a guide on what to do after a skiing or snowboarding collision, and contact us if you or anyone you know need advisement on the proper steps to take following an accident.

1. Alert Approaching Skiers

Ask someone to plant skis in an X uphill of the collision. This is a widely recognized signal both to uphill skiers and snowboarders and to patrol that there is an injured skier below.

2. Check for Injuries and Call Ski Patrol

If you think you may be injured, call ski patrol. It is better to have help and not need it than try to ski or ride down the mountain and potentially worsen any injuries. See below for a list of emergency numbers for Colorado ski resorts.

Some resorts also offer apps that will allow you to contact ski patrol at the click of a button. For Vail Resort mountains (Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Crested Butte), use the EpicMix app. There is a ski patrol red cross logo in the upper right corner where you can select the resort where you are skiing or riding. The Aspen Snowmass app (Aspen, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass) also has a feature that allows you to click on the mountain where you are skiing or riding and place an emergency call immediately.

3. Exchange Information with the Other Party

The Ski Safety Act requires skiers and snowboarders involved in a collision to exchange information. Leaving the scene of a collision is a criminal offense.

4. Document and Gather Evidence

If you can, take photos of the area of the collision. Or have a friend you are skiing with do it for you.

5. Get witness information

Ski patrol typically will not get witness contact information or statements. If someone stops to help or says they saw the collision, thank them and take their name and phone number.

6. Call an Attorney with Experience in Skier Collision Cases

The law firm of Chalat Hatten & Banker handles more skier collision cases than any plaintiff’s firm in the country. Experience matters, and we can help. Call our ski and snowboard accident attorneys at (720) 790-4177 for a 100% free case evaluation.

EMERGENCY NUMBERS FOR COLORADO SKI RESORTS

Arapahoe Basin: 911

Aspen Highlands: 970-544-3052

Aspen Mountain: 970-920-0723

Beaver Creek: 970-754-6911

Breckenridge: 970-496-7911

Buttermilk: 970-920-0969

Copper Mountain: 970-968-3311

Crested Butte: 970-349-2236

Echo Mountain: 720-899-2100

Eldora: 303-258-8102

Granby Ranch: 970-887-5170

Hesperus: 911

Howelsen Hill: 911

Keystone: 970-496-6911

Loveland: 303-571-5580, ext. 101 (911 preferred)

Monarch: 719-530-5111

Powderhorn: 970-268-5355

Purgatory: 970-385-2178

Ski Cooper: No cell service

Snowmass: 970-923-0530

Steamboat: 970-871-5911

Sunlight: 911 preferred

Telluride: 970-728-7585 or 911

Vail: 970-754-1911

Winter Park/Mary Jane: 970-726-1480

Wolf Creek: 970-264-5639

Telluride’s Lift Tickets Now Include $25k Injury Coverage: Is it Enough?

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

There’s No Business Like Snow Business

Year after year, Colorado’s ski resorts go to battle to attract and retain season pass holders and daily visitors. Lift tickets provide the foundation of ski-nomics, accounting for roughly 50% of each resort’s revenue every year. After all, if they don’t have anyone skiing down their mountains, what do they have? (Well, that’s subjective, but we can tell you what they won’t have: revenue from equipment rentals, food and beverage, and snow school – all of which generates the other 50% of revenue.).

The stiff competition among Colorado’s ski industry titans results in a fierce, annual season pass war. And with the uncertainty of the pandemic, the precarious climate, and inflation reaching a record high, this year’s duel over season pass sales got very interesting.

Vail Resorts, for example, slashed their Epic Pass prices by 20%, which proved to be a huge success. The price cut helped Vail sell 2.1 million passes for the 2021-22 season, 900,000 more than the 2019-2020 season.

Telluride’s new strategy? Add value without cutting prices.

TELLURIDE’S NEW MILE HIGH STRATEGY

Telluride ski area, in partnership with tech startup, Spot, is now offering $25,000 accident medical expense coverage for skiers and snowboarders injured on the mountain. The coverage is automatically included in the price of every lift ticket and season pass Telluride sells during the 2021-2022 ski season.

Anyone who skis and snowboards knows there is risk involved with participation in these sports. So having a $25,000 security blanket, so to speak, for any medical expenses that result from a ski accident is great. But we wondered, how much does the average ski injury cost?

We sat down with Evan Banker, ski injury attorney, and partner at Chalat Hatten & Banker and asked:

IS $25,000 ENOUGH TO COVER MEDICAL EXPENSES AFTER A SKIING ACCIDENT?

“The interesting thing about personal injury law is that no two cases are ever the same,” Evan explains. “Every situation and every circumstance is unique, so the answer to that question is it depends. In some cases, yes, $25,000 could be enough to cover medical expenses after a skiing or snowboarding accident. Generally, however, the answer is no. A common injury resulting from a skier collision is an ACL tear. Medical expenses for a torn ACL, including doctor’s visits, MRI, surgery, location costs, medication, rehab/physical therapy, can easily be in the $30,000 range.”

In this example, with the Spot coverage, you might come out even, or maybe be out a few thousand dollars. “But,” Evan goes on to say, “you haven’t been compensated for your time off work. You haven’t been compensated for your pain, or the ordeal you’ve gone through. You haven’t been compensated for the damage to your knee going forward. You haven’t been compensated for the ruined vacation. Yes, it’s a good thing that $25,000 was covered, but it is not full compensation.”

While no two cases are the same, let’s play out this example. In our extensive experience with ski injury accidents, it is typical to see claims for skier collisions that resulted in an ACL tear, with a good healing result, in settlements in the range of $70,000 – $100,000. Even after paying an attorney and paying back your health insurance (they are secondary to the at-fault skier), here is a reasonable range of outcomes*:

Spot Medical Coverage 

Out of pocket: $0.00;

Total compensation $0.00

$70,000 Settlement

$24,500 attorney fee, $10,000 repayment to health insurance**;

Total compensation: $35,500

$100,000 Settlement

$35,000 attorney fee, $10,000 repayment to health insurance**;

Total compensation: $55,000

*No two cases are the same, and past results are no guarantee of future success.

**Repayment to health insurance is taken from the settlement; there is no out-of-pocket expense to repay health insurance.

MODERATE SKI ACCIDENTS VS. SERIOUS SKI ACCIDENTS

An ACL tear with good healing results, although no laughing matter since they can be very painful and can require months to heal, would be considered a moderate injury. Sometimes, ski collisions can result in an ACL tear along with other injuries such as broken bones. Surgeries to repair a broken arm can cost up to $16,000, and a broken leg might cost up to $35,000.

It is not uncommon, however, for ski collisions to result in more severe injuries such as a traumatic brain injury which typically requires life-long treatment and care and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

If you were injured in a ski collision in Telluride, don’t be tempted by a $25k medical expense reimbursement policy without knowing all of your options. Do your research, call your friends and family, contact an experienced ski collision attorney before making any decision.

DENVER, CO SKI INJURY ATTORNEYS AT CHALAT HATTEN & BANKER

For an appraisal of your case, please call and talk with a lawyer experienced in ski collision cases. We are here to walk you through your legal options and answer any questions you may have. We represent clients throughout the state of Colorado, including Denver, Aurora, Boulder, Lakewood, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Summit County and Eagle County.

Waivers don’t shield ski resorts that violate state law from liability, Colorado Supreme Court rules Miller v. Crested Butte, LLC

Kelly Geraghty on August 7, 2024

The pages of fine print that skiers and snowboarders must agree to when hitting the slopes in Colorado — waivers of liability — do not protect ski resorts when resorts violate state laws or regulations, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The ruling, handed down in the case of a 16-year-old girl who fell from a ski lift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort and was paralyzed two years ago, likely ends a years-long push by the ski industry to use waivers to shield resorts against almost all lawsuits, even in cases where ski areas violated state law, experts said.

“It’s a sea change, in terms of ski areas’ responsibilities and consumers’ ability to be protected from ski areas’ negligence,” said Evan Banker, a personal injury attorney at Denver firm Chalat Hatten & Banker. “…From a consumer protection standpoint, it’s huge. Because liability breeds responsibility.”

In their 5-2 decision, the Colorado Supreme Court justices considered a lawsuit brought by Annie Miller and her father, Michael Miller, over Annie’s 30-foot fall from a lift at Crested Butte, which is owned by Vail Resorts. The father and daughter from Oklahoma boarded the Paradise Express chairlift, a four-seat, high-speed lift at the resort, on March 16, 2022.

Annie couldn’t get properly seated, and grabbed the chairlift to keep from falling. Her father and others began to yell for the lift to be stopped as she was dragged forward, but the lift continued with Annie hanging from the chair and her father trying to pull her back to safety.

Eventually, Annie fell and landed on her back. Even then, the lift did not stop, and Michael Miller was forced to ride to the top and ski down to his daughter, who suffered severe injuries and was paralyzed after the fall.

Michael Miller brought a negligence lawsuit against Crested Butte, arguing that the resort employees should have stopped the lift well before Annie fell and that failing to do so violated Colorado’s Ski Safety Act and the Passenger Tramway Safety Act. A lower court ruled much of Miller’s claim was invalid, and he appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Monday’s ruling partially reversed the lower-court decision and allows Miller to continue to pursue the negligence lawsuit against the resort.

Sara Huey, a spokeswoman for Vail Resorts, declined to comment on the ruling because the Millers’ lawsuit is ongoing. In court filings, attorneys for Vail Resorts argued that the lawsuit misstated the precedent in Colorado around private liability waivers, which skiers and snowboarders must agree to when buying lift tickets and passes.

“Colorado courts have upheld private recreational waiver agreements, even where the plaintiff could have (or did) point to a statute regulating the activity,” attorney Michael Hofmann wrote. “The existence of recreational safety regulation has never been enough to prohibit private parties from agreeing that a waiver defense will be available.”

“Big victory for ski safety”

More broadly, the state high court’s decision likely ends efforts by the ski industry to expand the protections that waivers of liability give ski areas.

“This was a big victory for ski safety in Colorado,” said Bruce Braley, who represented the Millers. “It says unequivocally that ski areas cannot force skiers and snowboarders to sign away their rights to protection under the statutes and regulations that govern the ski industry in Colorado.”

The ruling turns back the clock on liability in some Colorado ski accident cases, Banker said.

“For many, many years… everyone sort of agreed that when you sign that waiver you are waiving claims of negligence, but you can always still make claims if the ski area fails to do the things it is required to by law, like maintaining the lift properly,” Banker said.

But since about 2017, the ski industry has been successfully challenging that understanding through targeted litigation, winning key court cases that strengthened the protection afforded by waivers and pushing to essentially provide complete immunity for anything that could happen at a ski resort unless there was gross negligence, Banker and Braley said.

“So what this has done is change that,” Banker said. “It brings us back to the landscape everyone understood it to be many years ago. Which is, you can waive claims of negligence, but the ski area doesn’t get to avoid its legal responsibility, its responsibility in statute and regulations, by having you sign a waiver.”

Adrienne Saia Isaac, a spokeswoman for the National Ski Areas Association, a Lakewood nonprofit that represents more than 300 sk- area members, said it is “too early to tell how the ruling will affect the Colorado ski industry.”

The association argued in court filings both that the lift operator at Crested Butte was not required to stop the lift in response to Annie Miller’s mishap, and that liability waivers do not allow ski areas to get around statutory regulations.

“While chairlift accidents within the reasonable control of ski area operators will never be eliminated, they are rare,” wrote Brian Birenbach, an attorney in Breckenridge representing the National Ski Areas Association. “This will not change by the continued enforcement of liability waivers in the courts.”

Source:  SHELLY BRADBURY | sbradbury@denverpost.com | The Denver Post

Article: Liability waivers don’t shield Colorado ski resorts that violate law (denverpost.com)