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Yeah, but the bad part is that all of these are fucking true. And the "victims" made millions of dollars out of them.
from the Seattle-PI website
Posted by ckrueger at 3/15/08 2:45 p.m.
I
was one of the jurors on this case. This article doesn’t tell much of
the story. Only by sitting in the courtroom for a month and listening
to detailed testimony can you really know what happened here. The
leaders at Snoqualmie Pass had a great deal of evidence that this jump
was poorly designed and they did nothing to make it safer. They never
even passed along the information to the groomer. A ski instructor
overshot the jump and broke his back. On the accident report, he wrote
that if the jump was not fixed, someone would be killed. Still, the
people who ran the pass did nothing.
Skiing is an inherently
dangerous sport and Kenny Salvini takes responsibility for what
happened to him. This is in the court record. That is why the jury
assigned only 45% of the responsibilities to the ski area. The rest of
the responsibility was assigned to Salvini and the inherent risk in
skiing. The dollar amount was based on doctor’s estimates of the cost
of caring for him for the rest of his life. We listened to days of
testimony about what it takes to care for someone in his condition and
how much it costs. To those who can’t believe such large amounts,
without remember exact numbers I can tell you that the actual estimated
cost for Kenny’s care was more than 32 million dollars and the jury
award was 45% of that. Yes, it does cost a very very large amount of
money to care for a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. This case
was not about Kenny Salvini becoming a rich man. Even if he ever gets
this award, it will not begin to cover the basic cost of caring for
him. Of course he may never get the money as the ski industry will
appeal endlessly. Meanwhile his life goes on with no movement from the
neck down and no money to provide for his care.
Far from a
runaway jury, 14 intelligent, thoughtful individuals took more than a
month out of our lives to learn the FACTS of this case. Most of us went
into this experience feeling that Salvini must have been pretty dumb
and reckless to injure himself in this way and we came away convinced
that there is much the people running Snoqualmie Pass could have done
to diminish the danger of a poorly designed, poorly built and poorly
maintained 30 foot jump placed right in the middle of an enormous
slope. Despite many warnings, they did nothing and two young men paid a
very high price for that neglect.
Skiing and snowboarding are
inherently dangerous. My own teenage son snowboards and loves the jumps
in the terrain park. Unfortunately I know very well that this is a
risky sport. All we can do is ask the people who run the ski area to
apply some science and some common sense to the jumps they design to
help limit that risk. After that is up to boarders and skiers to make
good choices and live with the risk.
