Skiing and conflicts of laws

The law often tries to serve conflicting masters, like fairness on the one hand and predictability on the other.

Businesses love and rely upon predictability. They also want to limit or cap their exposure to losses so that they can stay in business. Ordinary folks often just want fairness.

This conflict can play out on ski hills and is playing out now in the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Ski hills have had potential liability for years under a statute known as the Occupier’s Liability Act. To negate or lessen the severity of their exposure to injury claims from skiers claiming bad hill maintenance they have had their patrons sign liability waivers. Those documents are allowed in consideration of that statute.

The validity of those waivers is thus crucial to the ski hill operators.

Enter the Consumer Protection Act. It does not allow potential defendants to “contract out of providing services of a reasonable quality.” Arguably, that is what those waiver forms try to do.

There are two separate ski injury cases that were heard by the Ontario Court of Appeal in early February where the interplay between those statutes was considered- these cases will have importance far beyond the ski industry, as other fun, but dangerous activities like jet ski rentals, or parachute jumping, would also face this same problem.

Although this is all very interesting,  but try to keep your mind on your skiing when going down the slope, rather than law, or you might find yourself intimately involved in this legal problem!