New Hampshire Law Blog

The New Hampshire Senate Banks and Insurance Committee held a hearing on Tuesday on HB 619-FN.  The bill would add snowboarding and snow-tubing to the list of activities for which ski areas are immune from civil liability when someone is injured.  It would also protect ski areas from all liability for injuries to trespassers, even if the ski area’s agents acted willfully or recklessly.   

I attended and testified because I wanted to make sure that the committee knew the difference between these activities and normal skiing on a ski trail.  Most importantly,  tubers have no control over their speed, direction or stopping, and the activity happens on trails contained by walls and a big snow ramp at the end.  Tubers are, therefore, completely dependent on the ski areas to design, construct and maintain those areas in a safe way. 

Snowboard terrain includes ramps, boxes, rails, half-pipes and other attractions which are designed, constructed and maintained by the ski areas.  Again, riders have no control over how well they are designed, built or repaired.  Like tubers, snowboarders are dependent on the ski area for their safety. 

For some reason, the ski industry in New Hampshire did not want the committee to favor an amendment brought by the trial lawyers which stated that the ski areas were responsible for design, construction and maintenance of tubing areas and snowboarding terrain parks.  However, ski industry supporters claimed that they already had such responsibility under the common law, and denied that the bill relieved them of such responsibility.  This made no sense to me, so I pointed that out to the committee.

Simply put, there is no legitimate reason for the ski industry to oppose the language proposed by the trial lawyers.  The trial lawyers’ amendment was intended merely to make snowboarding and tubing safer, and to make sure that ski areas took responsibility for design, construction and maintenance of the parts of the areas they solely control.  It provided a clear standard for the ski industry to know its legal responsibilities, and for courts to decide whether cases should go forward.  It also corrected an error in the bill which would have allowed the ski area and its agents to have no civil liability to trespassers, even if the ski area acted intentionally or recklessly to injure them.

The committee appeared concerned about the issues raised by this amendment, and it seemed as though that they would take the issues into consideration when acting on the bill.