2 replies to this topic

[Peter]

Paralyzed skier awarded $14 million for fall at Snoqualmie

11:50 AM PDT on Saturday, April 7, 2007

Associated Press

KENT, Wash. - A skier has been awarded $14 million after being paralyzed in a fall from a ski jump at the Summit at Snoqualmie.

In February 2004, Kenny Salvini of Lake Tapps fell 37 feet from a jump at Central Terrain Park and maintained by Ski Lifts, Inc.

A King County jury on Friday found that the operator failed to take safety into consideration at its Summit West terrain park and therefore was partially responsible for the crash.

The full jury award was for about $31 million, but that amount was decreased to $14 million after calculating "the comparative fault" of Salvini and "the inherent risk of the sport," Salvini's Tacoma lawyer, Jack Connelly said.

During the five-week trial at the Regional Justice Center in Kent, engineers and an aeronautics professor from the University of California, Davis, testified the jump was improperly designed and featured a short landing area.

The jump was a badly designed "tabletop," Connelly said. The man who built the jump "eyeballed it with a Sno-Cat" rather than engineering a design, he said.

Although 15 other skiers and snowboarders had been hurt on the jump earlier that season, the jump was left open.

"Going off this jump was the equivalent of jumping off a three-story building," Connelly said. "If you're going to be throwing kids 37 feet in the air, these jumps need to be engineered, designed and constructed properly."

Salvini, 27, previously was captain of the wrestling team at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. He is now a quadriplegic with medical needs that over his lifetime will cost between $23 million and $26 million, Connelly said. His mother is his full-time caregiver.

Guy Lawrence, a spokesman for The Summit at Snoqualmie, read from a statement after the jury's decision, saying officials were "disappointed but respectful" of the verdict.

"At the Summit at Snoqualmie, the safety of our guests and our employees has always, and will continue to be our primary concern," he said. But, Lawrence added, participation "suggest that a skier or rider accepts the risks of that activity."

[SkiBachelor]

I still think it's Salvini fault for not inspecting the jump before he went off of it. Not every jump is designed to handle every trick out there.

I've ended up hurting myself pretty badly (compound fracture with the bone sticking out in two places) by accidentally clearing a jump by more than 20 feet. Now if the take off was built bad, that's a different story since that could totally send you in the wrong direction at an acquired angle.

[Snoqualmie guy]

I can guess which one it was from the story. this one is the largest by far! the base hill is about 20ft. high and the jump itself is about 5ft. high. If you crash off that one... not good.