Kenny Salvini case/RCR resorts...reopening discussion

"Kenny Salvini was 23 when he flew off a jump in the terrain park at Washington state's Summit at Snoqualmie ski area and broke his back on the hard-packed snow, leaving him paralyzed. This month, a jury in Kent, Wash., awarded Salvini, now 27, $14 million, marking the largest jury award levied against a U.S. ski resort.

Booth Creek Ski Holdings in Avon, which operates Snoqualmie, is promising an appeal. Booth Creek recently sold Snoqualmie to Florida real-estate investment trust CNL Income Properties in a four-resort deal, but the Avon company operates the ski area under a long-term lease with CNL. The impact of the jury's award on the nation's increasingly bigger and burlier terrain parks could change how those parks are designed and maintained.

"The repercussions will probably be that terrain parks will be constructed more carefully, and that's a good thing," said Jim Chalat, a Denver attorney specializing in ski law who characterizes Colorado's Ski Safety Act as providing "immunity" for resorts. "I would hope that more attention is paid to the proportionate elements so that a jump isn't by design launching riders over the landing area. Liability breeds responsibility. Immunity breeds impunity to safety considerations."

Geraldine Link, public policy director at the National Ski Areas Association, said Washington is not one of the six states to recently update its skier safety legislation to include freestyle terrain. Colorado legislators in 2004 amended the state's much-copied ski legislation to include terrain parks as part of the sport's inherent dangers.

"The features change at different points in a day, when the sun comes or the wind blows harder," Link said, noting there are no industry-wide guidelines for building terrain-park features. "The way the features are used changes. It's a function of the rider and their speed and the angle of takeoff and all these things. There are a lot of variables in there which makes it the beautiful sport that it is."

Summit at Snoqualmie has twice won the National Ski Area Association's National Award of Excellence for Skier Safety.

"Our terrain-park staff adheres to all of the best demonstrated practices of the ski industry in the design, construction, maintenance, inspection, testing and operation of our terrain parks. We don't agree with some of the statements made to the media. However, this does not diminish in any way our heartfelt concern for Kenny Salvini," read a statement Booth Creek spokeswoman Pat Peeples provided to The Denver Post. "Our terrain-park staff always considers safety as their first and most important goal. This concern for safety drives all of our operations."

Ironically, Booth Creek owns and operates Snow Park Technologies, an internationally renowned terrain-park design firm run by Chris Gunnarson, who is considered one of the world's leaders in development, design and construction of terrain parks. Gunnarson and SPT designed several Winter X Games courses and are in charge of designing parks at all six Booth Creek resorts, including Snoqualmie. While Gunnarson and his team designed the park and the park guidelines at Snoqualmie, local crews are in charge of maintaining the park.

"It should be noted that the April 6, 2007, verdict in this case will be appealed," read the statement by Booth Creek, which is insured by global insurance conglomerate AIG.

Colorado limits damages

Washington state's ski law is not as sweeping as Colorado's 1979 Ski Safety Act. Colorado's law defines resort requirements for reasonable care and safety like signage but essentially places the responsibility for safety on the skier, noting the sport's "inherent dangers and risks." The Colorado act also imposes limitations on damages that can be collected from a ski-area operator. While those limitations can be lifted in the case of resort negligence, several Colorado resorts increased their protection from lawsuits by requiring skiers to sign waivers promising never to sue, even in the case of negligence.

Like Colorado, Washington's ski safety law puts the onus for safety on skiers. But the law does not limit damages that can be collected. The jury in the Washington case originally awarded Salvini $31 million, but the judge whittled the award down to $14 million, citing the "comparative fault" of Salvini and the "inherent risk of the sport," said Salvini's attorney, Jack Connelly.

Connelly said there were 15 accidents on that jump this season. In the 17 days before Salvini fell 37 feet and landed on flat, hard snow beyond the jump's landing, 10 people were injured from similar landings off the same jump, including eight riders who had to be carried down the mountain by ski patrol, he said.

"There was a man a week before who broke his back on the jump. There was an accident 2 1/2 hours before this accident. The jump was never changed," Connelly said. "The failure to even look at the landing area when you have 15 prior injuries I think certainly qualifies as gross negligence."

Connelly presented the jury with engineers who studied the angles of the jump's takeoff and landing. They found the jump's landing to be too short and its takeoff sent skiers onto a flat landing.

"Terrain parks are fun and a good thing to have, but the resorts have gotten ahead of themselves and they need to make sure they are following some safety guidelines. These things are not that hard to build," Connelly said. "As these jumps get bigger and bigger, you need to make sure somebody is looking at those jumps from a civil-engineering or structural-engineering standpoint, just as they do in competitions.

"These jumps are not that hard to build. It should not take a bunch of people getting paralyzed for resorts to take a close look at safety in their terrain parks."

Injuries are unavoidable

Freestyle skiers like Hayden Howard and Brian Stuhr fear a big settlement could lead to changes in their beloved terrain parks. Howard, 23, has a special pass to Winter Park's expert-only "Dark Territory" terrain park. To get the pass, the freestyle coach at the ski area signed a waiver promising to never sue the resort and watched a 20-minute video on terrain-park safety and etiquette.

"If you go out there and get hurt, that's on you. If it goes on to the resort, we start losing terrain parks," said Howard, who has endured many injuries on his road to being an expert freestyle skier. "If you do this stuff long enough, you are going to get hurt. It's your responsibility."

Stuhr, 23, also has the pass to Winter Park's Dark Territory. This year he suffered a concussion after slamming a landing off a jump in a terrain park.

"I should have checked out the jump first but I didn't. I don't blame the resort for that," Stuhr said. "You should always check out the jumps first. That was just me being ignorant and stupid.

"If people keep suing resorts when they get hurt, all we are going to have is green runs."