Ski area liability statutes and skier responsibility

Skiing is the most heavily legislated recreational activity in the country. Twenty-five of the jurisdictions in this research regulate it directly, and the statutes do far more than limit what a resort can be sued for. They tell the skier what to do, tell the operator what to mark and what to sign, and in several states cut the time available to bring a claim down to months. None of that is a waiver. This page is general information and not legal advice, so take your own statute and your own paperwork to a lawyer admitted in your state.

Inherent risk immunity, and why it is not a waiver

The core move in every one of these acts is the same. The legislature decides, as a matter of law, that certain conditions belong to the sport, and then bars recovery from the operator for an injury that results from them. Vermont states the idea in a single sentence that applies to any sport at all, at 12 V.S.A. 1037:

a person who takes part in any sport accepts as a matter of law the dangers that inhere therein insofar as they are obvious and necessary.

Michigan says the same thing about skiing specifically at MCL 408.342, listing variations in terrain, snow and ice conditions, bare spots, natural debris, and collisions with lift towers, other skiers and properly marked equipment. Ohio's section 4169.08 puts it as an express assumption: a skier assumes the risk of and legal responsibility for injury, death or loss to person or property resulting from the inherent risks of skiing.

Notice what is missing from all three. Nobody signed anything. The bar operates against the day-ticket holder who walked past the ticket window and the season pass holder who read every clause, on identical terms. That is why the immunity and a signed release are two separate defences. A resort raises the statute first, because it disposes of a whole class of allegation without a contract argument, and raises the release for whatever the statute did not reach.

What the skier is required to do

These acts are unusual in tort legislation because they impose duties on the plaintiff. Four recur almost word for word. Maine's section 15217 gives the skier sole responsibility for knowing the range of their own ability to negotiate any slope or trail and requires them to ski within it and keep control at all times. Michigan adds staying clear of snow-grooming vehicles and equipment, heeding all posted signs and warnings, and skiing only in areas marked open on the trail board. Tennessee's 68-114-103 requires the skier to refrain from acting in a manner that may cause or contribute to injury. New Mexico's 24-15-10 adds a prohibition on using a lift or slope while under the influence and a requirement to wear a ski retention device.

None of this is decorative. A statutory duty breached by the plaintiff is the cleanest comparative fault argument available, and it explains why the operator's own record-keeping around signage, trail board status and grooming times gets litigated so hard.

Collisions and the duty to give your name

Several states treat a collision on a slope the way traffic law treats one on a road. Maine makes the responsibility for a collision between a skier and any person or object solely that of the skiers involved, and forbids a skier involved in a collision or accident from leaving the vicinity before giving a name and current address to ski area personnel or the ski patrol. Vermont's section 1038 is more specific:

Any person who is involved in a collision with a skier at a ski area which results in bodily injury to any party to the collision has a duty to provide his or her name and local and permanent address to the other parties to the collision and shall proceed to the ski area first aid facility and provide that information to the ski area first aid personnel.

The same section adds two things worth knowing. The ski area bears no responsibility for making anyone comply with that duty or for obtaining the other party's details, and a person who uses the resort's facilities to reach terrain outside open designated trails becomes liable for the cost of rescue, medical and other services, with attorney fees and costs recoverable. Ohio requires a skier involved in an accident to assist the injured person and notify the proper authorities.

Where the statutes spell out a notice

Warning-text requirements are far less uniform here than in the equine family, and it is worth being precise about who prescribes words and who does not.

Colorado prescribes them exactly. Under C.R.S. 33-44-107 the notice goes on signs at every place lift tickets are sold and at the loading point of each base area lift, on a sign at least three feet by three feet, with WARNING in red letters and the notice in black letters at least one inch high, and the same text goes on every lift ticket in clearly readable print:

WARNING

Under Colorado law, a skier assumes the risk of any injury to person or property resulting from any of the inherent dangers and risks of skiing and may not recover from any ski area operator for any injury resulting from any of the inherent dangers and risks of skiing, including: Changing weather conditions; existing and changing snow conditions; bare spots; rocks; stumps; trees; collisions with natural objects, man-made objects, or other skiers; variations in terrain; and the failure of skiers to ski within their own abilities.

Maine's section 15217 requires a sign where lift tickets and ski school lessons are sold and at the loading point of each passenger tramway, opening:

Under Maine law, a skier assumes the risk of any injury to person or property resulting from any of the inherent dangers and risks of skiing

The Maine notice then continues with an enumerated list of conditions, including weather, snow conditions, natural objects, lift structures and collisions with other skiers. We were not able to retrieve the remainder of that sentence in a form we would reproduce as a quotation, so read it at the legislature's own text before printing a Maine sign.

New York takes a third approach. General Obligations Law 18-106 requires a conspicuous Warning to Skiers at every point of sale or distribution of lift tickets and the imprinting of text and graphics on the tickets themselves, but the wording is set by the Commissioner of Labor's regulations rather than by the statute, so the words are not in the code and have to be taken from the regulator.

Several states prescribe no wording at all. Michigan, Tennessee and New Mexico impose duties without fixing a notice. West Virginia's 20-3A-3 requires a conspicuous notice when grooming or snowmaking is under way on an open trail and notice of the retention device requirements at prominent locations, but leaves the words to the operator. Utah requires trail boards in prominent locations listing the inherent risks and the limitations on liability; we could not retrieve that section's text from the legislature's own site, which serves it through a script, so treat the description as secondhand and verify it. Ohio's operator duties are about marking rather than wording: lights operating on trail maintenance vehicles whenever they are working, a visible sign or other warning implement on snowmaking equipment, difficulty signs of a type approved by the national ski areas association, a reasonable opportunity for freestylers and competitors to inspect the course, and visible access to the course for skiers using a tubing park.

Short notice periods and shortened limitation periods

This is the provision most likely to decide a ski case, and most skiers have no idea it exists. Massachusetts, at chapter 143 section 71P, requires the injured person to give the operator notice by registered mail within ninety days of the incident, and to bring the action within one year of the date of the injury. A failure to give notice does not bar recovery where the operator had actual knowledge of the injury, had a reasonable opportunity to learn of it within the ninety days, or was not substantially prejudiced by the lack of notice, but those are arguments, not entitlements.

Oregon's ORS 30.980 requires notice by registered or certified mail within one hundred and eighty days after the injury, or within one hundred and eighty days after the skier discovers or reasonably should have discovered it, and sets a two-year limitation period. Its exceptions are the operator's knowledge of the injury within the window, good cause for the failure, and the operator's own failure to inform skiers of the notice requirement as the statute directs, which is a live reason for a resort to keep its notices current. Maine sets a flat two years for civil actions for property damage, bodily injury or death against a ski area or tramway owner or operator, at 14 M.R.S. 752-B. Colorado and Utah likewise legislate the limitation and damages side of ski claims rather than leaving them to the general rules; Utah caps non-economic damages against a ski area operator, excluding punitive damages and wrongful death. Read your own state page for the general limitation period that sits behind these special ones.

A ski area statute is not a tramway safety statute

Colorado and Vermont each have two chapters, and the distinction between them is often lost. The ski safety act is tort legislation: it allocates risk between skier and operator and it is enforced by courts. A passenger tramway safety act is regulatory: it sets construction, inspection, maintenance and licensing standards for lifts, ropeways and surface tows, and it is administered by a board or an agency that can suspend operation. Montana's chapter is titled for passenger ropeways and ski areas together. Breaching a tramway rule is not automatically a tort, but it is evidence, and a lift-loading injury can put both chapters in play at once.

Alaska is where the distinction bites hardest, because its act does something no other state in this family does. Under AS 05.45.120:

A ski area operator may not require a skier to sign an agreement releasing the ski area operator from liability in exchange for the right to ride a ski area tramway and ski in the ski area.

A release taken that way is void and unenforceable. The statute leaves room for releases from special event participants, coaches, helpers, spectators and rental customers, and for releases a third party requires for rentals or events, but the ordinary pass-for-release trade is closed.

Releases on top of the statute

Everywhere else, the release still does work, because inherent-risk immunity does not reach a badly maintained lift, an unlit groomer, an unmarked closure or a race course nobody was allowed to inspect. Utah's path is the one to learn from. Its Supreme Court held two season pass releases contrary to public policy, reading the Inherent Risks of Skiing Act as a bargain in which the legislature limited liability for inherent risks so that insurance would stay affordable, and concluding that a resort extracting a release for its own negligence on top of that had broken the bargain. The legislature answered by enacting 78B-4-405, which permits a skier to waive or release claims before an injury and then adds that a minor, or a parent or guardian on the minor's behalf, may not enter such an agreement. So Utah now allows the adult release the court had voided, and forbids the family one that most resorts actually want.

Montana is the other structural outlier. Section 28-2-702 voids contracts whose object is to exempt anyone from responsibility for fraud, willful injury or violation of law, and Montana courts read violation of law to include ordinary negligence duties. The only route through is 27-1-753, which lets a written waiver taken before a sport or recreational opportunity cover ordinary negligence as well as inherent risks if it states the known inherent risks and carries the statute's bold warning that by signing the participant may be waiving the legal right to a jury trial. A waiver inside that safe harbour is expressly outside 28-2-702; a waiver outside it is void.

How a ski area should set this up

Work through the statute in your own state and build the operating record it assumes you keep.

• Put the notice where the statute says, at the size the statute says. Where a state prescribes words, use those words. Where it delegates them to a regulator, as New York does, take them from the regulator's current specification rather than from another resort's sign.
• Print it on the ticket and on the pass. Colorado requires it in clearly readable print on every lift ticket, and Oregon's notice-requirement exception rewards an operator who can show it told skiers about the deadline.
• Keep dated evidence of your marking. Photograph trail boards, difficulty signs and closure signs at opening and after changes. Log grooming and snowmaking windows against the trails they covered, and log the times the maintenance vehicle lights were running.
• Log incidents on the day. The notice and limitation provisions cut both ways. A first aid report taken on the hill, with names and addresses from both parties to a collision, is what supports an argument that you had knowledge of the injury within the statutory window.
• Take a release that does what the statute does not. The statute handles inherent risk. The release has to name the operator's own negligence in terms, which is where the liability waiver template and the drafting rules in how to write a liability waiver come in. Where minors ski, check whether your state will honour a parent's signature at all, and in Utah note that it will not for ski claims.

Reading the state table below

The table below lists the jurisdictions in this research with a statute in the ski, winter sports or passenger tramway family, with the statute's name, its citation and a link to that state's page. Twenty-five appear. Colorado, Utah and Vermont each show more than one entry, because a ski safety act, a tramway act and a separate winter sports act are different laws doing different jobs.

The absence of a state from this table means only that this research found no statute in this family for it, not that skiing is unregulated there. Follow each link to the state page for the enforceability rule, the minors position, the gross negligence line and the limitation period that sit behind the ski statute, and read the statute itself at its source before you rely on it.