Anderson v. Pine Knob Ski Resort, Inc.
| Decision Date | 16 July 2003 |
| Docket Number | Docket No. 121587, Calendar No. 7. |
| Citation | 469 Mich. 20,664 N.W.2d 756 |
| Parties | Robert R. ANDERSON and Christine M. Anderson, individually and as next friends of Robert C. Anderson, a minor, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. PINE KNOB SKI RESORT, INC., Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
Feeney Kellett Wienner & Bush (by James P. Feeney and Raymond M. Kethledge), Bloomfield Hills, MI, for the plaintiffs-appellees.
Robert L. Bunting, Oxford, MI, (Robert Charles Davis, of counsel), Sterling Heights, MI, for the defendant-appellant.
This case concerns Michigan's Ski Area Safety Act (SASA), M.C.L. § 408.321 et seq., and whether a skier's collision with a timing shack is a danger that inheres in the sport, precluding recovery for injuries that result. We conclude that it is such a danger and that defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law under the SASA.
Robert C. Anderson was a member of his high school's varsity ski team. On January 5, 1999, he participated in an interscholastic giant-slalom competition, scheduled at Pine Knob Ski Resort, Inc. (Pine Knob). While his first run was uneventful, on his second run, after passing the last gate on the way to the finish line on the slalom racecourse, he "caught an edge" as he neared the finish line and lost his balance. Before he could recover, he collided with the shack housing the race timing equipment. He suffered lacerations to his face, arm, and leg and broke several bones and teeth.
Anderson, through his parents as his next friends, sued, alleging negligence by the resort. Pine Knob responded by seeking summary disposition on the basis that it, as a ski-area operator, was immune from premises-liability claims by recreational skiers, of the sort here presented, because of the SASA. Pine Knob also argued that summary disposition was warranted, should it fall outside the protections of the SASA, under the common-law doctrine that bars recovery for plaintiffs who are injured by open and obvious hazards. The trial court denied defendant's motion, ruling that these claims fell outside the immunity granted by the SASA and that questions of fact existed, foreclosing summary disposition on the common-law premises-liability issue.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed in an unpublished opinion per curiam, agreeing that this circumstance fell outside the SASA. With regard to defendant's assertion that the danger was open and obvious to plaintiff and, thus, the claim was barred on that common-law basis, the Court of Appeals agreed it was open and obvious, but held that the bar did not apply here because the risk of harm was unreasonable.
We granted defendant's application for leave to appeal. 467 Mich. 897, 654 N.W.2d 327 (2002).
This case concerns a trial court's decision on a motion for summary disposition under MCR 2.116(C)(10), as well as a matter of statutory construction. We are asked to determine whether a set of circumstances falls within the scope of M.C.L. § 408.342(2). To do this, if the language of the statute is clear, we simply apply the terms of the statute to the circumstances of the case. Veenstra v. Washtenaw Country Club, 466 Mich. 155, 159-160, 645 N.W.2d 643 (2002). Because this is a matter of law and concerns a summary-disposition motion under MCR 2.116(C)(10), we review de novo. Chandler v. Muskegon Co., 467 Mich. 315, 319, 652 N.W.2d 224 (2002).
The Legislature, in 1962, enacted the SASA in an effort to provide some immunity for ski-area operators from personal-injury suits by injured skiers. The statute states:
As can be seen, this act specified that skiers have the responsibility to ski under control, as well as to heed signs and warnings and avoid snow-grooming vehicles and equipment. Moreover, the act continued that, by skiing, skiers are held to have accepted certain types of risks from dangers that inhere in the sport as long as those dangers are "obvious and necessary." Id.
In determining if the potential of collision with a timing shack is a danger inherent in the sport and, if it is, whether it was a danger that was obvious and necessary, we must study the structure of the statute and the language employed by the legislators in M.C.L. § 408.342(2).
This subsection identifies two types of dangers inherent in the sport. The first can usefully be described as natural hazards and the second as unnatural hazards. The natural hazards to which the act refers without limit are "variations in terrain; surface or subsurface snow or ice conditions; bare spots; rocks, trees, and other forms of natural growth or debris...." M.C.L. § 408.342(2). The unnatural hazards include "collisions with ski lift towers and their components, with other skiers, or with properly marked or plainly visible snow-making or snow-grooming equipment." MCL 408.342(2). For both types of hazards, the examples are clearly only examples because the Legislature specifically has indicated that the covered dangers are not limited to those expressly described. The examples are employed to give the reader guidance about what other risks are held to be assumed by the skier. We undertake this analysis by determining what is common to the examples. This exercise is what legal scholars describe as discerning meaning by use of the doctrine of ejusdem generis,1 and leads us to conclude that the commonality in the hazards is that they all inhere in the sport of skiing and, as long as they are obvious and necessary to the sport, there is immunity from suit.
With that understood about the statute and its proper construction, we turn to whether the timing shack was within the dangers assumed by plaintiff as he engaged in ski racing at Pine Knob.
There is no disputed issue of fact in this matter that in ski racing, timing, as it determines who is the winner, is necessary. Moreover, there is no dispute that for the timing equipment to function, it is necessary that it be protected from the elements. This protection was afforded by the shack that all also agree was obvious in its placement at the end of the run. We have then a hazard of the same sort as the ski towers and snow-making and grooming machines to which the statute refers us. As with the towers and equipment, this hazard inheres in the sport of skiing. The placement of the timing shack is thus a danger that skiers such as Anderson are held to have accepted as a matter of law.
In adopting this approach, we reject the argument of the plaintiff, which was adopted by the Court of Appeals, that, while some sort of protection of the timing equipment may have been required, the shack was larger and more unforgiving than other imaginable, alternative timing-equipment protection might have been. We find nothing in the language of the statute that allows us to consider factors of this sort. Once hazards fall within the covered category, only if they are unnecessary or not obvious is the ski operator liable.
To adopt the standard plaintiff urges would deprive the statute of the certainty the Legislature wished to create concerning liability risks. Under plaintiff's standard, after any accident, rather than immunity should suit be brought, the ski-area operator would be engaged in the same inquiry that would have been undertaken if there had been no statute ever enacted. This would mean that, in a given case, decisions regarding the reasonableness of the placement of lift towers or snow groomers, for example, would be placed before a jury or judicial fact-finder. Yet it is just this process that the grant of immunity was designed to obviate. In short, the Legislature has indicated that matters of this sort are to be removed from the common-law arena, and it simply falls to us to enforce the statute as written. This we have done.
Finally, as this matter is fully resolved by reference to the SASA, we need not consider whether defendant retains a duty under common-law premises liability.2 In accord with this, the remaining portions of the judgment of the Court of Appeals that addressed this issue are vacated.
The dissents would go even further in this matter than plaintiff has urged, advancing the remarkable proposition that this statute should be read to create a test for tort liability, which can be properly characterized as: Could this accident have been avoided if the shack were in a different place than it was? If so, defendant loses.
We believe that this new proposed standard is a most ill-advised direction for the law to take in this case, or in virtually any other case that does not concern strict liability. The reason is that it can be predicted with one hundred percent certainty that the answer to the dissents' question in this case, and any other case where such a standard would be applied, is: Of course, if the shack were somewhere else, plaintiff would not have hit it. The problem this standard creates is that it fails to recognize that no accident, be it a...
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