Posted On: October 27, 2006, 12:08 pm CDT

Posted By: Wild Bill

These cases exhibit the sharp delineation between the real world and the hypothetical world in which our judges operate. In the real world people can get hurt doing risky activities because the injured person either accepted the risk or negligently failed to assess before embarkation. In the court's world, people only get injured if someone else failed to protect them from themselves and in this case, even that is not enough. The very reason for requesting a waiver is because the owner cannot gurantee what a horse will do or what a skier will do, it is simply beyond the owner's ability to control. Owner's cannot rationally be held repsonsible for inherent risk. In Colorado our legislature recognized this when it passed a law that no skier may assert a claim arising from the inherent dangers and risks of skiing (Section 33-44-112, CRS). In fairness, I think the court remanded this case back to determine if there was any negligence on the part of the owner, but I'll be they settle.