The legal landscape for legal liability associated with sports and recreational activities changed dramatically leading up to the early 1980’s.  Once protected by the long-held understanding that participants in inherently dangerous, high-risk activities were responsible for their own accidents and injuries, owners and operators of sports and recreational facilities, most notably those within the downhill ski industry, saw their industries threatened by aggressive and abundant litigation.

Cipriani & Werner’s Sports and Recreation Liability Practice Group has for decades been integral in establishing the precedents that govern the duty owed by operators of places of recreation and amusement, defending their interests and limiting their liability in litigation.  For almost 40 years, our Sports and Recreation Liability Practice Group attorneys, who are also members of the Association of Ski Defense Attorneys, have been the successful champions of every critical appellate decision made in this area of Pennsylvania law.

Cipriani & Werner established, for the first time, the applicability of the doctrine of Assumption of Risk in the context of downhill skiing, created and codified the viability of the no-duty doctrine in sports law, and reversed the judicial destruction of exculpatory release provisions—all protections that sports, recreation, and ski facilities enjoy today and must have to survive.

We help our clients navigate the risks of owning and operating these businesses, recognizing that most of these activities cannot be “made safe,” and that it cannot be up to the owners and operators to “ensure” safety under any and all circumstances.

Representative Matters:

• Smith v. Seven Springs Farm, Inc. (3rd Cir. 1983), established the application of the doctrine of the Assumption of Risk to sporting activities.
• Hughes v. Seven Springs Farm, Inc. (Pa. Supreme 2000), established the viability of the no-duty doctrine to sporting and recreational activities.  Also set forth the test for the application of the no-duty rule.
• Chepkevich v. Hidden Valley Resort L.P. (Pa. Supreme 2010), reversed a lower appellate decision eradicating settled law on the applicability of exculpatory releases and the no-duty rule.
• Kibler v. Blue Knob Recreation, Inc. (Pa. Super. 2018), maintained viability of exculpatory release provisions.
• Quan Vu v. Ski Liberty Operating Corp., 295 F. Supp. 3d 503 (M.D. Pa. 2018), aff'd, 763 Fed. Appx. 178 (3d Cir. 2019), reaffirmed that the risks of a skier-to-skier collision and a change of elevation at the trail’s edge were inherent risks of downhill skiing.

Anthony W. Hinkle, Esq. is the Chair of the Sports and Recreation Liability Practice Group and can be reached at ahinkle@c-wlaw.com or (610) 567-0700.