Sneak Peek of the Week
Colorado Supreme Court navigating high-consequence terrain in case that could weaken decades of ski resort immunity to lawsuits
In the past decade, the Colorado Court of Appeals and a federal court have heard cases involving injured skiers and ruled that the liability waivers they signed to get their lift tickets and ski gear eliminated their right to sue ski resorts.
Now, the Colorado Supreme Court is weighing waivers. An Oklahoma teenager who was paralyzed in a fall from a Crested Butte Mountain Resort chairlift argued this week that the waivers her dad signed to get her lift ticket should not relieve the ski area from its legal duty to keep chairlift riders safe.
The state’s high court is navigating high-consequence terrain. If the justices rule that Annie Miller’s claims of negligence against the Crested Butte ski area and its parent, Vail Resorts, can continue even though her father signed a liability waiver, the Colorado resort industry will endure the first-ever weakening of protections that have deflected skier lawsuits for several decades.
The resort industry — joined by Colorado rafting companies and camp providers — said a decision that weakens waivers could lead smaller organizations to stop welcoming children and larger companies to spike costs for kids. The resort industry argues that state rules imposed by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Board require ski areas to protect chairlift riders, even as the waivers work to eliminate the possibility of lawsuits.
The justices asked a lot of questions of the attorneys representing the Miller family and the ski area.
“So what’s the point” of legal requirements under the Colorado Ski Safety Act and the Colorado Passenger Tramway Act? Justice Carlos A. Samour, Jr. asked the ski area’s attorney Michael Hoffman.
“I mean, I feel like your position renders all these statutory provisions meaningless,” Samour said.
Samour said he was concerned by the idea that all chairlift riders at ski resorts must sign a waiver.
“And yet we have a situation where the legislature is saying, ‘Hey, ski industry, these are standards that we expect. That we are requiring you to keep,’” Samour said. “And the ski industry then turns around and says, ‘Well, that’s nice of you. Thank you. But we’ll just make people waive and be done with it.’ Something about that is wrong.”
The Colorado Supreme Court hearing sought to overturn a District Court decision last year to dismiss the Miller family’s ordinary negligence claims. The family’s claim of gross negligence — which is much more difficult to prove than ordinary negligence — remains in the lower court.
Some justices asked the family’s attorney, Bruce Braley, why not just stick with the gross negligence case? The family argues that lift operators failed to stop the Paradise chair in time, despite pleas to stop the lift after Miller was unable to properly load.
Justice Monica Márquez said the “allegations of the complaint actually set out a pretty solid claim for gross negligence if, in fact, these allegations prove to be true. If no one was there, if no one was paying attention and the lift kept operating, that seems like gross negligence to me.”
But the gross negligence argument requires the Millers to argue for “a higher burden of proof,” Braley said.
And Braley was dubious that the ski area operator would not argue that the waiver signed by Annie Miller’s father, Mike Miller, dismisses all negligence claims.
“Look at their waiver language. Their waiver language is complete and absolute. A complete assumption of risk for anything that happens on our property, a waiver of liability for all claims,” Braley said. “If they truly believed that there were claims for gross negligence and recklessness, their release language … should tell prospective riders on a public tramway ‘This waiver does not release claims against us for gross negligence, recklessness or intentional acts.’”
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story
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Breaking Trail
Colorado’s oldest ski fundraiser — Jane-A-Thon — celebrates 25 years at Mary Jane
14,371
Number of children, parents and caregivers in all 64 Colorado counties served by Invest In Kids in 2022-23
Eric Hilty was a lawyer, sitting with pals at a bar 25 years ago, wondering how he might raise money for the Invest in Kids nonprofit he just founded.
The child advocacy group needed to pay lobbyists to help secure state funding for its nascent program connecting nurses with first-time mothers. Over beers, the group of skiers carved a plan.
“We needed to raise money quickly so we thought, ‘Maybe we could tie it into skiing,’” Hilty said. “Why not try to ski all the moguls runs at the Jane in a day?”
A couple months after that happy-hour brainstorming session, the first Jane-A-Thon, in 2000, drew 16 skiers who raised $10,000 as they skied all 16 of Mary Jane’s back-diamond bump runs, with Hilty handing out water bottles and PowerBars from the back of his car parked at the slopeside C-lot.
Since then, the state’s longest-running ski fundraiser for kids has enlisted 4,678 participants who gathered supporters as they skied Winter Park’s dimpled dame, the mogul-Mecca of Mary Jane. The bumpers have raised more than $2.4 million for Invest In Kids, helping 131,000 children and 42,000 parents in every county of Colorado.
The 25th Jane-A-Thon — March 1-2 — is expected to involve about 450 skiers and snowboarders and will likely raise more than $340,000. The March 1 Jane-A-Thon Corporate Day includes 27 company teams — some with as many as 50 members — gathering for team-building ski descents while raising money for Invest In Kids.
“We really think the Jane-A-Thon couldn’t be a more authentic Colorado type event,” Hilty said.
The Nurse-Family Partnership pairing nurses with low-income moms-to-be for two years remains Invest In Kids’ flagship program. The Denver-based nonprofit has added new programs as its budget has grown to more than $5 million a year, serving more than 14,000 children, parents and caregivers last year.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
The Playground
Former Japanese American incarceration camp officially protected as Amache National Historic Site
7,300
Peak population of the Camp Amache incarceration camp during World War II
It’s official: Colorado’s Granada War Relocation Center — known as Camp Amache — is now the Amache National Historic Site. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Thursday formally closed the deal, ensuring federal protection for the land where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
It’s been almost two years since legislation designated the site as part of the National Park System. The final process of acquisition and land donation were recently concluded, clearing the way for the National Park Service to assume management of the nearly one square mile of historic land outside the southeastern Colorado town of Granada.
Camp Amache opened in 1942 and closed in 1945. It was one of 10 inland incarceration camps built in response to fears that Japanese immigrants — about two-thirds of those at Amache were American citizens — posed a threat to the U.S. after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“As a nation, we must face the wrongs of our past in order to build a more just and equitable future,” Haaland said. “The Interior Department has the tremendous honor of stewarding America’s public lands and natural and cultural resources to tell a complete and honest story of our nation’s history.”
>> Click over to The Sun to read this story by Kevin Simpson
The Guide
Remote meat pics could save small ranchers
1.62 million
Acres of lost Colorado farmland between 2017 and 2022
A pilot program for grading beef could enable small ranchers in Colorado to compete with the heaviest players in the industry.
For decades, beef processors had to pay several hundreds dollars to federal inspectors who would examine cuts and grade them. A new plan unfolding in slaughterhouses across the West would allow beef processors to snap photos of their cattle and carcasses and send them to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The marbled meat pics could offer even the smallest ranchers a chance to sell top-shelf — and pricey — “Prime” and “Choice” cuts. That’s a big deal for producers with high-quality beef who are forced to sell their cuts as ungraded meat.
“In the past, graders were in the facility grading on a regular daily basis,” Tom Vilsack, the head of the USDA, told an audience at the National Western Stock Show on Jan. 19. “If you were big, that was the cost of doing business. But if you’re a small operation and only doing a handful of cows, if you can’t say ‘Prime,’ worth $600, or ‘Select,’ worth $300, it’s the difference between being in business and out.”
The program is built for small and midsize operations as the agriculture industry sheds smaller ranchers and farmers at an alarming rate.
“We are deeply concerned about the accelerated loss of farms and farmland in the last 40 years or so,” Vilsack said. The new agriculture census data released Tuesday shows a loss of 141,733 farms and roughly 20.1 million acres between 2017 and 2022 in the U.S. During that time, Colorado lost 2,837 farms and 1.62 million acres.
“Last year, in 20 operations across the country, we said what if we train people to take really good photos of the carcass so a grader could see what they’re looking at in real time,” Vilsack said.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story by Tracy Ross
The Grumpy Caucus is declining in Colorado but they are still out there skewing polling data
15%
Percentage of Colorado respondents to the annual State of the Rockies poll who said climate change has been “not significant at all” in the past decade
The annual State of the Rockies Project “Conservation in the West” survey conducted by Colorado College has consistently found Western residents championing land protection while fretting pollution, the loss of wildlife habitat and the impacts of climate change. Over 14 years of annual surveys, a remarkably consistent number of residents from all political corners express strong support for conservation policies as well as a growing concern about losses and impacts to natural spaces. That’s not surprising at all, right?
The West’s expanding embrace of conservation makes the opposite end of the survey spectrum stand in stark relief. I always wonder about the survey respondents who veer well off that conservation path. Like the people who respond “not a problem” to our most pressing issues. Let’s look at those grumpy survey-takers and see how their numbers have changed over the years. Spoiler: There are a lot fewer disgruntled survey-takers in Colorado compared to a decade ago.
Percentage of the roughly 436 Colorado respondents in the 2024 survey who answered “not a problem” when asked to prioritize these issues. Let’s call them the Grumpy Caucus.
* Climate change = 24%, versus 25% in 2016
* Impact of oil and gas drilling = 25%
* Hazardous waste “in my community” = 18%
* Inadequate water supplies = 7%
* Low levels of water in rivers = 4%, versus 15% in the 2014 survey
* Loss of fish, wildlife habitat = 11%, versus 22% in 2014
* “Uncontrollable” wildfires = 10%, versus 20% in 2016
* Air pollution = 15%, versus 26% in 2014
* River pollution = 12%, versus 23% in 2014
* Loss of family farms = 8%
* Microplastics in our water = 10%
* Loss of natural areas = 16%
Only 1% of Colorado respondents said the cost of living in the state was “not a problem.” That is the smallest percentage “not a problem” response for any question asked in the poll. Pollsters counted 87% of Colorado respondents saying the cost of living is an “extremely” or “very serious” issue, which ranked as the highest number of those responses to any question.
By comparison, in the 2015 survey, 25% of Colorado survey respondents said the cost of living was “not really a factor” in deciding to live in the state.
Here are some more numbers detailing 2024 survey respondents who appear to not appreciate the outdoors, alongside comparisons to earlier surveys:
* 7% said spending time outdoors will “not have much effect” on rates of anxiety, mental health problems and depression in young people. In 2015, 27% of Colorado respondents said children not spending enough time outdoors was “not a problem.” (In 2024, the survey charted the highest-ever number of people saying time outdoors would help “some” or “a lot” with mental health issues.)
* 8% said the Endangered Species Act has been “more of a bad thing.”
* 15% said climate change has been “not significant at all” in the past decade.
* 41% said they did not seek out news on wildlife, recreation or nature in the last year.
* 5% of Colorado respondents in 2024 strongly oppose creating new federal parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and recreation areas, versus 6% of Colorado respondents in 2014 who strongly supported federal lawmaker calls to sell Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land to reduce budget deficits.
* 10% of Colorado respondents said they strongly support removing protections on federal areas to allow more drilling, mining and development, versus 30% in 2014 who said they were “much more likely” to vote for a candidate who wants to reduce government red tape so that there can be more oil and gas development.
* 28% of Colorado respondents in 2024 said they were conservative and 27% said they were liberal, versus 25% in 2014 who said they supported the Tea Party, 37% who described themselves as conservative and 23% as liberal.
Lori Weigel, whose New Bridge Strategy conducts the annual survey of nearly 3,000 Western voters, said the bah-humbug responses are a combination of “knee-jerk” and political reactions to issues like climate change and the shifting economies of extractive industries.
“Some of it is definitely partisanship … and there are some generational distinctions in there,” she said, noting how younger survey respondents may feel more urgency over pressing issues. “As time moves on we will see if they retain that level of concern.”
— j
Corrections & Clarifications
Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.
Last week’s newsletter had a series of errors we need to fix. In an item about wetlands protection in Silverton, we removed an erroneous quote from Silverton trustee Olivia “Liv” Cella Edwards. The headline was changed to clarify that Cella Edwards suggested allowing a moratorium on wetlands development to expire. A total of 85 acres of wetlands was covered by the moratorium and about 8.8 acres of wetlands on private property could be affected by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA. The cost of a town-commissioned study was also removed.
We apologize for these errors.