Image of Loon Mountain from Wikimedia Commons.
A New Hampshire Judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against Loon Mountain Recreation Corp. and Boyne USA by a Massachusetts couple who’s teenage son was involved in a crash with a ski instructor.
Susan and Michael Hanus sued after their 13-year-old son ended up with a concussion, broken arm and broken leg when an instructor on a snowboard collided with him in February 2011.
Under state law, skiers can’t sue resorts over injuries resulting from skiing’s inherent risks, but the couple argued that the immunity granted to ski areas didn’t apply in their case because the resort employee violated the law by skiing across a closed trail.
U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Laplante, who dismissed the lawsuit, stated that “the mere fact that (the boy) collided with a ski area employee who was behaving negligently or recklessly does not remove the collision from the realm of skiing’s inherent risks, at least as far as the statutory language is concerned”.