Civics For Skiers: How Courts Decide What the Law Says and Who Gets the Blame

Zach Armstrong | | Post Tag for BrainsBrains
Crested Butte, CO, was recently involved in a Colorado Supreme Court Case that changed how liability waivers can be used by the ski industry. | Photo: Crested Butte
*This article is the fourth article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard.

“We live in a litigious society.” That phrase, referring to Americans’ love of suing one another, has probably motivated more operations changes at ski areas than any other. Slow signs, caution disks, pads on lift towers and light poles, and other “safety implements” can all trace their origin to a lawsuit or the fear of a lawsuit. But, the legal system in the United States provides far more than a way for Americans to extract financial damages from one another, even for the ski industry. The interpretation of laws, the whole point of the Judicial System, runs everywhere from criminal wrongdoing and defining societal responsibilities to governmental accountability and environmental protection.

While there are certainly instances of criminal law that touch the ski industry, most of the court cases that have a significant impact on the ski industry are civil cases. A civil case is a legal dispute between two individuals or groups, and can include corporations, nonprofits, state governments, the Federal government, or private citizens. Most lawsuits the ski industry becomes involved with consist of individuals suing a ski area for negligence following injury or death. Beyond an arbitration of who is responsible for an accident, a lawsuit offers a chance to reaffirm or reshape what the law says on a topic, through resolution of a specific dispute.

Ski Area Liability Law: Who’s Fault Is It?

As was discussed in a previous Civics For Skiers article, state legislatures make the laws, or ski statutes, that establish the legal responsibilities a ski area has to carry out. If a skier believes they were injured because a ski area failed to do something it was supposed to that might have prevented the accident, they can try to sue the ski area for negligence. Skiing is a dangerous sport, with an injury rate of roughly one in one thousand skier visits, ski areas rely on a patchwork of state laws, insurance, liability waivers, and risk management to protect themselves from what could be a deluge of negligence lawsuits.

State ski statutes lay out the duties ski areas and skiers need to carry out to establish a baseline level of risk and responsibility. Ski statutes commonly name specific “inherent risks to the sport of skiing,” including things like unpredictable snow or grooming conditions, trees, rocks, collisions with other skiers, and other things that are not practical for a ski area to have complete control over. These inherent risks directly shield ski areas from lawsuits. If an injured skier tries to sue a ski area for negligence because they crashed after losing their edge on an icy groomer, the lawyer for the ski area can get the lawsuit dismissed without a trial by pointing to specifics in the ski statute. However, ski statutes often can be written with vague language, or may be unclear given the specifics of a particular accident, and in that case, a jury trial may be needed to decide on the facts of the case.

The correct, or accepted interpretation of the law has the potential to change with each case brought against a ski area. Recently, the Colorado Supreme Court considered the state’s interpretation of ski area liability waivers and duties set out by the ski statutes in Miller v. Crested Butte. In March 2022, then-16-year-old Annie Miller fell nearly 30 feet off a chairlift after she failed to properly seat herself. The accident left her paralyzed from the chest down and prompted her father to file a lawsuit on her behalf saying Crested Butte failed to properly operate the Paradise Chairlift, and the accident was a direct result of that failure. The district court dismissed the case shortly after it was filed, stating that the Millers had waived their rights to file suit in the liability waivers they had signed as part of the Epic Passes they had bought.

Negligence lawsuits are the most common type of court case ski areas become involved with. | Image: Taylor Ahearn

The Millers appealed their case to the Colorado Supreme Court, arguing that Crested Butte was in violation of the Ski Safety Act and the Passenger Tramway Safety Act. In general, they argued, liability waivers should not cover situations where a ski area, or other recreation company, is in violation of the law. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in May 2024 that liability waivers cannot be used to sidestep “statutory or regulatory duties” like those laid out in Colorado’s laws and regulations governing chairlifts.

Five justices signed onto the majority opinion and two dissented. Supreme court decisions establish or reaffirm a precedent for how the law should be interpreted in the future. The decision in Miller looked to previous cases, like the 1998 decision in Bayer v. Crested Butte, which classified ski lifts as common carriers, restricting what ski areas can use liability waivers for. The majority opinion was dubious of the idea that waivers between private parties could be used to get out of obligations established in state law.   Other lawsuits involving chairlifts in Colorado will now look to the decision in Miller v. Crested Butte to understand what legal protections come from a liability waiver. The other two justices on the court offered a dissenting opinion, which does not directly influence the interpretation of the law. Dissenting opinions offer justices a chance to argue why they may disagree with the majority opinion or its analysis, and can lay the groundwork for future legal arguments in similar cases. In Miller, the dissenting opinion argued that waivers cover all types of negligence claims, even those where negligence stems from specific laws or regulations.

After a win at Colorado’s highest court, Miller v. Crested Butte was still not over, since appellate courts and supreme courts typically only issue rulings on legal questions. With a new Supreme Court interpretation in hand, the Millers went back to District Court to resolve the lawsuit. In August 2025, a six-person jury found Crested Butte was indeed negligent in its operation of the Paradise Chairlift and awarded the Millers $21 million in damages. The jury also found that Annie Miller was partially responsible for the accident and certain state laws in Colorado cap the amount juries can assign in damages, so in the end Vail Resorts, the owner of Crested Butte, had to pay out $12.4 million.

$12.4 million is a lot of money, even to Vail Resorts, and this large penalty highlights why many ski areas prefer to settle negligence lawsuits that they have even a fraction of a chance of losing before they go to trial. Ski areas are required to carry liability insurance, and the insurance companies are ultimately responsible for paying out either settlement money or any financial penalties. Negligence lawsuits become a numbers game, instead of nuanced legal arguments. The ski area pays an insurance premium each year, and the insurance company expects to have to occasionally settle a lawsuit for the ski area, but wants to avoid having to make a huge payout that could come from a jury ruling against the ski area. So, many cases are settled, even if they could be won in court. But, this trial aversion winds up working against the ski areas, because settlements do not change or affirm the interpretation of the law. Rather than drawing legal lines deeper in the sand around what protections the law provides ski areas, settling most negligence lawsuits sends a signal that plaintiffs have a good chance of getting at least a little money from a ski area, no matter the facts of the case. Of course, another deterrent to many cases getting to trial on both sides is the fact that lawyers are expensive, and lawsuits can last many years before there is a decision.

Legal Precedent On The Move

Ski law is changing across the country. The Oregon Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Bagley v. Mt. Bachelor threw out  blanket liability waivers. In the years that followed, several high-profile lawsuits shook the ski industry, including an $11 million decision against Ski Bowl in 2022, a $49 million lawsuit filed against Mt. Bachelor in 2022, a $6.2 million lawsuit against Mt. Hood Meadows, a $4.6 million lawsuit filed against Hoodoo in 2025, and a $3.6 million lawsuit against Willamette Pass. This explosion in litigation caused Safehold Special Risk, one of just two insurance companies left in Oregon, to pull out of the state. The Oregon State Legislature has tried to pass new laws to mitigate the impacts of the Bagley decision on the ski industry, but this winter brings huge increases in insurance premiums and uncertainty about the longterm viability of many ski areas in the state.

Oregon’s ski industry has been thrown into turmoil following a 2014 decision by the Oregon Supreme Court in a case involving Mt. Backelor. | Photo: Mike Frohmader

Next door in Idaho, the State Supreme Court issued a decision in Milus v. Sun Valley, which upended decades of precedent around the duties of ski areas and the inherent risks of skiing. The majority opinion, released in June 2025, established that ski areas are held to the standard of care of an ordinarily prudent person when carrying out the duties set forth in state law. These duties include things like marking snowmaking equipment and providing a trail map, and were previously held to no standard. The problem is, figuring out what the standard of an ordinarily prudent person is with regard to ski areas may take several more lawsuits to determine, and those lawsuits may have a similar effect on the insurance industry. Through higher insurance premiums or the potential for massive lawsuits, small ski areas in Idaho are facing enormous challenges in the coming years.

Alongside the Executive and the Legislative branches, the Judicial Branch of a state or the Federal government plays an important role in interpreting laws. State legislatures write laws establishing responsibilities for skiers and ski areas, but how those laws are interpreted comes through a series of cases argued in court. Lawsuits involving ski areas often follow terrible accidents involving death or serious injury, and that can make it difficult to consider abstract legal arguments about what ski areas are required to do under the law, and what they can be sued for. With an injury rate close to playing football, but an average age much higher than your typical football player, skiing has always relied on strong legal protections to ensure its survival as an industry. Now, as precedent changes in Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, and other states across the country, both skiers and ski areas will have to take a serious look at the risks inherent to skiing and what a changing legal environment means for the future.

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