Child wins $4 million against Canadian ski school

A snowHead

A simple error by a ski instructor at the Canadian resort of Mont Olympia in Quebec resulted in catastrophic injuries to a pupil, and a $4 million compensation settlement to his family. Mathew Armutlu, 9 years old at the time, suffered permanent brain damage.

This report by The Montreal Gazette

A snowHead

It seems to me that North Americans get to claim far larger ammounts than Europeans, having said that the ammount i probably what it will cost to keep him until he dies so fair enough.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Hmm...impossible to tell with the only high level reporting but how far does the in loco parentis aspect actually go? I've seen coaches letting kids of a similar and younger age ski quite tricky terrain (unpisted, glades, chute) where clearly they couldn't stop a kid hitting a tree if they took off in that direction. Seems to me a 9 year old ought reasonably to have some instinct of self preservation relative to a 3 year old. Would parents be happy if their kids up to 16 could only be taught in lessons on reins?

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Wow, that's terrifying to read. How on earth can, from the way that's phrased,

The 16-year-old, who was 9 at the time of the accident in January 2003, was told by his instructor to make his own way down a novice slope and subsequently lost control, went into the woods, smashed into rocks with enough force to crack his helmet and suffered permanent brain damage.

an instructor ever let a kid ski a novice slope? Like, I tell kids to make their way down to me constantly. You can't do much else.

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Much more detail here: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=599034b0-3272-4a8e-9ead-e07b6a846ee6&k=7578

On the day of the accident, Mathew was in a beginner's ski class with eight other children his age and an instructor identified only as KM.

During the last run of the one-hour, 45-minute lesson, the class was at the top of Mont Olympia's Olympia Trail, which is known as the "bunny hill." But one child didn't want to go down the hill, so KM sent the rest of the group down alone to meet their parents at the meeting point.

"KM admits that, save for a brief moment, she could not and did not observe the students as they proceeded down the hill," Zerbisias wrote. "In the court's view, KM's actions constituted a complete abandonment of the group halfway up the mountain."

Kugler pointed out that since it was the young children's first lesson, the instructor should have been better prepared.

"There were children with different abilities, and maybe for one their boots hurt, or they had to go to the bathroom, but the ski school gave her no instruction about what to do in this situation," he said in an interview.

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Thanks for that additional link, DaveC. One would have to be sure, but the newspaper report refers to the Olympia trail (No.17) - see right of this map - accessed (if things are unchanged since the accident) by T-bar lifts E or F.

If this really was the children's first lesson, then I'm surprised they had progressed from lift D - the magic carpet.

My impression is that the instructor was over-ambitious in taking a children's class that far up the hill in their first couple of hours. They would need the ability to turn to get down confidently, and I wouldn't expect much beyond snowplough braking after that short duration, with plenty of potential for pupils to lose the plough and lose control of speed.

My own view about beginners and lifts is that they shouldn't be rushed. Side-stepping up the hill, with lots of simple straight-run practice and plough practice, may be less exciting than riding lifts but it keeps things confined and controllable.

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After all it is free

I feel for the kid, obviously, but as a professional it's terrifying that a poor rookie 17yrold can be dragged through the courts, for wht you have to assume is forever.

The thing is, it happens all the time - "a beginners ski class" could quite easily be kids that've done 3-4 days and can snowplow turn. I know the "bunny slope" is pretty shallow in Fernie, and if you straightline it far enough you can get some decent speed up. Kids do occasionally lose control and just shoot off, you can very rarely intervene to catch them if they do go. Asking kids to ski places "first" isn't uncommon either. I've sent countless classes from the top of the bunny hill to where they meet their parents, either for a bit of independant ski time to have a break from the snake formation, or to go to their parents, or if a kid is crying. I'd love to know how I'm supposed to avoid the exact situation where this (admittedly horrible) accident happens, and it's genuinely concerned me for taking duty of care of kids.

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The whole thing is utterly horrific and I'm not surprised it's making DaveC feel jumpy.

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pam w, pretty standard. I'm imagining the scenario from the map as fitting perfectly in Fernie - the bunny slope isn't long, it's near impossible for anything bad to happen, and sending kids down "unsupervised" (wtf does that mean when you have 10 of them and they're following you it's not like you can stop them freaking and straightlining) is so standard in a day you wouldn't believe...

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If the run is the "bunny hill" then there is some considerable hyperbole in

"KM's actions constituted a complete abandonment of the group halfway up the mountain"

http://www.montolympia.com/Sites/olympia/images/Carte%20des%20pistes/Pages%20de%203905_MO_CartePiste_03.pdf

Mountain, my arris. Total vertical drop is only 600ft so less than 300 maybe on the bunny hill with clear sight lines if the piste map is to be believed. Its hardly dropping the kids off the top of the Aiguille du Midi and saying make your own way down.

fatbob, yebbut, if the slope was such that the child was able to hit a rock at speed/with force, something about the slope must have been dangerous for an inexperienced kid, no?

You know it makes sense.

Hurtle, my bunny hill has a stream one side + trees, and a fenced area with tree trunk fencing. It's still massive, but how exactly are you going to get enough snow on a bouncy castle to keep any area of a mountain totally safe? fatbob, that's one of the big things that I find so scary - lawyers lawyering up. I can't imagine the parents could of been far, if they're picking kids up it implies foot access, so "abandonment" is kind of pushing it if there's line of sight too...

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Hurtle, Obviously but something about any ski slope on the planet is dangerous - collision damage from signage, cannons, ropes, other slope users, cute cut out penguins etc. If a kid takes off straightlining then even on a shallow gradient they can pick up significant speed. I know I have moderately more "inertia" wink

but friends and I comfortably managed to clock 30+mph on GPS speedtrap runs down an empty novice slope on snowboards once.

Tragic case but as DaveC says if every resort tried to operate a 100% safe environment it would be the end of ski lessons for kids.

A snowHead

Presumably ski schools carry insurance for this kind of awful eventuality? Like other professionals - doctors, lawyers, etc. My daughter is a sailing instructor; she'd be a fool to teach uninsured - even though she's an unpaid (though qualified) volunteer. I still would maintain that taking a group of kids out on a mountain on their first ski lesson ever is not a job for a 17 year old rookie. And if she was genuinely unable to contact anyone when she hit a problem then the ski school was arguably negligent. Of course a ski lesson can never be 100% safe - but letting kids on their first lesson head down even a gentle slope on their own sounds pretty dodgy to me. My husband's 7 year old twin nephews were desperate to be allowed to do that - they hated snowploughing and thought that learning to do it was super boring - but their instructor kind of insisted! Surely a little group of 9 year old boys were almost certain to try to race each other down?

A snowHead

DaveC, fatbob, yes, I entirely sympathize with both your viewpoints. But the facts of this case will, presumably, have been exhaustively compared and contrasted with the 'average' nursery slope - if such a thing exists - and a child's propensity to straightline whilst under supervision (as opposed to being left on his own) will also have been examined against a benchmark of some sort. And the result was: massive damages! It's worth remembering, though, that each such case is decided on its own facts, there's little to be gained, DaveC, by stressing over the generalisations. And it's only woolly generalisations that can be inferred on the strength of newspaper reporting and discussions like these. Chill. Toofy Grin

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

pam w, yes, of course, it's pretty much bound to have been insurers who picked up the tab, but that won't make the poor instructor feel any better.

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Hurtle, I think incidentally that despite the hyperbole there is enough in the reporting if accurate to suggest that there were perhaps some facts that pointed to the instructor not being totally in command of the situation such as that "she could not and did not observe them" and the $ amount attached to the damages is largely irrelevant provided they are not punitive. And your second rate conveyancer assessment of the value as precedent is of course wise.

My wider concern would be however that the cumulative impact of such cases pushes up insurance premiums to such levels that smaller ski areas are forced out of business. Already in Canada IIRC there have been cases of ski areas removing parks due to liability concerns (and surely they should be a case of user beware if appropriately signed).

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fatbob,

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If you want to read the whole of the Courts judgment, to get a fuller understanding of why it came to its decision you can find it here

http://dev.tribunaux.qc.ca/mjq_en/c-appel/fs_faq.html.

What you will find from a study of this is that the Court found that the case was established, based on the evidence led before the Court at the trial of the case, including evidence given on behalf of the injured child by expert witnesses ie experienced ski instructors. Thus what the Court did was to uphold the criticisms made of the unfortunate instructor concerned by other ski instructors........this was not the judge, from his ivory tower, deciding how he thinks ski lessons for kids should be organised and who carries the can if it goes wrong.

These bits seems particularly relevant

"Whatever the other terms of the bargain, I agree with the trial judge that the ski school breached its obligation to provide safe supervision when Z allowed the young boy, who was a novice, to ski unsupervised during the lesson, even on a relatively unchallenging trail. In other words, the bargain between the appellants and the respondents must have included, by implication, an undertaking that Z would not abandon her pupils as she did and direct them to ski to the bottom of the hill unsupervised. To say otherwise falls outside the reasonable expectations of both contracting parties for group ski lessons, especially in respect of children who are novice skiers. Moreover, I agree with the trial judge that a reasonable instructor would not have sent X down the hill unsupervised given his age and experience. A reasonable instructor, placed before the dilemma of attending to the recalcitrant child and the other children in the group, would have opted for a solution that did not place X and the others in the potentially dangerous situation of skiing down the hill unsupervised. The trial judge noted, in particular at paragraph [42] of her reasons, that Z failed to seek any assistance – be it from another instructor, a ski patroller or another adult skier – to send a message to her superiors for help. All things considered, this behaviour constitutes a failure to meet the contractual obligation to provide safe supervision of X in connection with his lesson.

32] Counsel for the appellants pointed to alleged errors by the judge that undermine her finding of wrongdoing on the facts. It was alleged that she was mistaken in identifying the level of supervision required of Z, as evidenced by a finding relating to the degree of supervision at paragraph [38] that counsel said is mistaken. In connection with the discussion of the question as to whether Z had to supervise the children at all times, the judge noted that "[t]he obligation to constantly supervise children is set out clearly in the Canadian Ski Instructors Teaching Alliance Handbook", referring in a footnote to precise paragraphs in a handbook published in 2000.

[33] There may or may not have been an error in the quotation from the handbook.[13] There was no overriding error, however, in respect of the principle of supervision as applied by the judge on the facts of the case. The overwhelming weight of evidence points to the fact that Z's failure to accompany X and the other children to the bottom of the hill was unreasonable conduct for a ski instructor in the circumstances. Z herself acknowledged in examination on discovery that in circumstances where one child presented particular difficulties, she had been taught to continue supervising the children and to ask for assistance if necessary. The director of the ski school acknowledged that an instructor's duty to supervise students extended, among other things, to watching the children as they skied down the mountain. He noted that when one child presents a problem, the instructor must keep the other members of the class together until assistance can be secured. Michel Auclair, Z's supervisor, confirmed that Z had been told to return the children to the care of their parents. He confirmed as well his eyewitness evidence that Z failed to watch X as he descended the mountain. Z acknowledged at trial that she had been told to follow the instructors' manual that stated "Supervisez constamment l'enfant ou l'adulte qui skie ou qui fait du surf des neiges." The respondents' expert Mark Weinberg testified to the effect that an instructor in Z's circumstances with the fearful student is not uncommon, that she should have known that she needed to seek assistance. In his experience, instructors in that situation are generally taught "never [to] leave students unattended, unsupervised"."

and

To say that the accident was caused by X's loss of control of his skis is, of course, not in itself an answer to the evidence brought by the respondents on causation. The respondents sought to prove that Z's failure to supervise X resulted in him taking an inappropriate trajectory down the hill, at an inappropriate speed, without making appropriate precautionary turns and stops to ensure his safe descent. Nobody denied that X's loss of control produced the accident, but the respondents submitted – and proved this to the satisfaction of the trial judge – that X's loss of control was directly imputable to Z’s fault. The respondents brought evidence that Z's failure to supervise the children according to the standards of a reasonable ski instructor in the circumstances – controlling their speed, their turns, the path down – caused X to lose control and hurt himself. The trial judge agreed.

[50] I see neither error of law nor palpable and overriding error of fact in the determination of causation by the trial judge. At trial, Z drew a path on an image of the Olympia trail as to how she would have led X and the others down the hill had she not stayed with the recalcitrant child. Needless to say, that path would have had the children ski well away from the T-bar on the side of the mountain, far from the dangers of the woods off-trail in which X hurt himself. Respondents' expert Mark Weinberg, an experienced ski instructor, was asked to evaluate the chances of an accident of the character of the one that befell X had the children been led at the appropriate pace down the path traced by Z He said "[i]n my opinion it would be impossible for X to have injured himself the way he did had that path been followed by the instructor and the kids". Expert Nancy Rubin gave evidence to the same effect.

[51] The appellants argue that even if X had been accompanied down the hill by Z, he might very well have lost control of his skis anyway. The appellants press the point in written argument: "Même lorsqu'une surveillance peut s'effectuer de façon directe et immédiate (ce qui n'est pas le cas en l'espèce), les tribunaux ont reconnu qu'elle n'offre pas de garantie qu'aucun accident n'arrivera […]." With respect, I am of the view that this argument rests on a wrong premise. The respondents did not need to show that the accident was guaranteed not to have occurred had Z supervised the child. They were bound, on the balance of probabilities, to show that the accident was caused by the wrongful failure to supervise X.

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that link seems to be a dud............this one might work

http://www.jugements.qc.ca/php/decision.php?liste=47515856&doc=0906BD801AD29BF412EF0B7933C2D77D005ACBC9A97EB695939DC4F9AD05C5B4&page=1

After all it is free

I wonder if insurers will continue to provide cover for ski instruction in Canada.

This case sounds complicated so it's tough to judge, at least they sought ski instructors for analysis in the trial.

I am a qualified dinghy sailing instructor and after a colleague got a suspended sentence for negligence in Greece for an incident involving a child that was totally not his fault I no longer teach. In this day and age it's just too risky to be in a position of responsibility when doing an activity like skiing or sailing where accidents can happen – keeping an eye on 6 kids (RYA teaching ratio) every second while sailing yourself is impossible and parents will do anything to lay blame. I don’t want to end up in court.

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Child wins $4 million against Canadian ski school

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