Mother Nature is fickle, beautiful, cruel and creates lawsuits

The Canyons Resort is being sued for the death of a patron from an inbounds avalanche. The Canyons had just opened up a new run for the day and Jesse Williams, 30, from Grand Junction Colorado was skiing the run. An 11 year old boy, Max Zilvitis, was also skiing the run. Both were caught in the avalanche Max survived. See Canyons Resort Avalanche Tragedy

Consequently the mother and wife of the deceased skier, Williams have sued a broad group of people over Williams’s death. See Lawsuits filed in slide death at The Canyons. Just recently the plaintiffs, survivors of the deceased added the new owner of the resort to the list of defendants. See Talisker added to case.

There are several issues that warrant discussion here.

The claims outlined in the plaintiff’s complaint are allegedly that the resort failed to hire ski patrollers “capable of keeping the mountain safe.”

Someone is an idiot here. No mountain is safe. Unless the resort said or marketed itself as safe this claim is just stupid. More importantly one of the greatest groups of people who walk on the earth are ski patrollers. They study hard, they train hard and they work even harder. No one can predict avalanches and too say that the patrollers did not do their job is an insult. The good news is that any “expert witness” the plaintiff’s find to support their theory will easily be proved a liar. No mountain is safe and no one can keep a mountain safe from an avalanche.

The complaint reportedly goes on to state:

“Defendants failed to properly and adequately train personnel responsible for avalanche forecasting and avalanche control,”

“Defendants owed the duty to deny public access to the ski run if the run was unsafe for skiing,”

Again this falls into the category that man knows everything and man can control Mother Nature. These are very stupid ideas at the least. What they plaintiffs may be playing is the financial condition of American Skiing Co. ASC owned the resort when the avalanche occurred. They had been operating all of their resorts with little money and running on the edge. Finally this last year all of their resorts were sold and ASC no longer exists. See American Skiing to Sell Last Remaining Resort: The Canyons

This may also answer why the plaintiff’s have added the new owner of the resort as a defendant. Talisker added to case. ASC has no money, no longer exists except to defend claims and the plaintiff’s argument is that Talisker bought the liabilities as well as the resorts. Allegedly Talisker is obligated to indemnify ASC for any claims brought after the sale. Ten individuals were also added as defendants also.

The land under part of the resort is also privately owned and leased to the resort. The land holder is a defendant. The landowner was all ready in a lawsuit against ASC over the land. By bringing in feuding defendants the plaintiff has strengthened its chances of winning because the defendants can never get together to raise an effective defense.

The individuals were added probably to guaranty that someone would be left holding the bag. The individuals would be protected, as employees, by their employer. Dependent upon the paperwork someone will step up to defend the employees. This is another effective ploy by the plaintiffs.

Feuding defendants make the best lawsuit for the plaintiffs. This is a common tactic used in product liability cases to weaken the defendants, prevent them from creating a solid defense and making the suit much easier to win. See Sports Authority artfully disentangles itself from a product liability lawsuit (Subscription).

This is not going to be a good case. It might be easily winnable because experts can prove that no amount of avalanche work can make a run safe. But whether the defendants can field an effective defense will be the real issue behind the scenes and the big reason why the case will be won or lost by the defendants.