A $12.4 million jury award to a woman paralyzed after falling from a Crested Butte Mountain Resort chairlift in 2022 marks an historical ruling against ski resorts that have long argued that liability waivers signed by skiers give them blanket immunity from lawsuits.
Annie Miller was 16 and on a ski trip with her Oklahoma church group when she slipped from the Paradise Express lift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in March 2022. Her family argued the lift operators at the Vail Resorts-owned ski area were negligent when they failed to stop the chair when Miller did not load properly. Her father, Mike, tried to hold his daughter but she fell 30 feet to hard-packed snow, shattering the C-7 vertebrae in her back and leaving her unable to walk again.
Vail Resorts argued it was immune to the negligence claims, citing the Colorado Ski Safety Act, which requires skiers to follow several safety rules, including knowing how to load chairlifts, and caps lawsuit awards at $200,000, as well as the liability waiver the Miller family signed when they bought three-day passes in November 2021. That resort argument has worked for decades with very few court decisions siding with skiers who sue ski areas.
A Broomfield County district judge in April 2023 dismissed two of the Millers’ claims, citing the liability waiver. Those “negligence per se” claims involved a ski area’s duty to keep chairlift riders safe and allegations that the lift operators at Crested Butte Mountain Resort violated standards for chairlift safety created by the American National Standards Institute, or ANSI, and enforced by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board.
The Miller family appealed that decision to the Colorado Supreme Court, which in May 2024 ruled that the standard click-through agreements used in every lift ticket sale did not shield ski areas from all negligence claims.
That landmark high-court ruling sent ripples through the recreation industry — including rafting outfitters and youth camp operators — who fretted the decision could spike insurance costs, raise prices and force recreation businesses to exclude young visitors.
The Colorado Supreme Court decision sent the case back to the Broomfield County District Court, where a jury this month heard the simple negligence claims. The jury of six listened to arguments for nine days.
While not supporting the Miller’s claim of gross negligence, the jury did support the family’s argument that the lift attendants violated safety standards.
After a day of deliberation, jury awarded Annie Miller $5.275 million for noneconomic losses, $5.275 million for physical impairment and $10.55 million for future economic losses. The jury found Crested Butte Mountain Resort was not wholly responsible for the accident, reducing the $21.1 million award by 25% to $15.8 million. Colorado law caps noneconomic losses at $690,000, so the total award was $12.4 million.
Award may be “the first and only” verdict based on failure to meet safety standards
The jury’s decision is a first-ever crack in the armor provided to ski resorts by liability waivers and the Ski Safety Act. Those waivers have never protected recreational businesses from intentional or reckless misconduct, which is legally defined as gross negligence. But for decades those businesses have used waivers to dismiss many claims by injured visitors who argued the rafting company or ski area operator was guilty of lesser levels of negligence.
The main argument in the Miller case was that Crested Butte Mountain Resort lift attendants violated ANSI safety regulations that were developed with the National Ski Areas Association.
The Miller case focused on the duties of the lift attendants and the people who trained the two first-year workers who were running the Paradise Express lift on that day in March 2022.
“The jury did find that Crested Butte violated those ANSI standards and the violation of that standard was the cause of Annie’s injuries,” said Brian Aleinikoff, a partner at the Leventhal Puga Braley law firm in Denver that represented Miller.
Aleinikoff and his partner Bruce Braley also represented the family of Kelly Huber, the Texas mom who died after being thrown from a malfunctioning Granby Ranch chairlift in December 2016. That case, brought by Huber’s two young daughters, who were seriously injured in the fall from the chairlift, was settled before it went to trial in 2022.
“When you are on a lift you are at the mercy of the resort operator and even if you did not get on the lift properly you should have every right to assume that the lift attendant is properly trained, paying attention and is ready to do their job and stop the lift,” Aleinikoff said. “There is a difference between not loading a chairlift and you going 243 feet up the line and the chair not stopping until you are 30 feet above the ground.”
Aleinikoff said the Broomfield jury decision “is the first and only verdict against a ski resort based on a negligence per se claim through those ANSI standards.” Annie Miller, now a second-year student studying music and psychology at The University of Tulsa, testified in the trial, as did her parents.
Vail Resorts was represented by Denver’s Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell and the global Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner law firms. Arguments on both sides revolved around interpretation and implementation of resort industry ANSI standards for chairlift operations.
“We disagree with the decision and believe that it was inconsistent with Colorado law,” reads an emailed statement from a Vail Resorts spokesperson. “Still, we recognize the personal toll this accident has taken on Ms. Miller and her family, and we wish her continued strength in her recovery. We remain committed to the highest safety standards in our operations.”
Chairlifts are among the safest modes of travel
The resort industry has long pointed to chairlift travel as one of the safest modes of public transportation in the world, with only 35 deaths from chairlift falls since 1956. In that span some 20 billion skiers have traveled 10 billion miles on chairlifts, according to the National Ski Areas Association, using numbers based on about 450 million lift rides a year. Elevators are more deadly.
But four people have died falling from Colorado chairlifts since 2016, including 32-year-old Donovan Romero who fell from a lift at Keystone last season. Romero was one of 18 falls from chairlifts reported to the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board in the 2024-25 season, a high point for the Colorado resort industry. Eight of those falls involved children.
The Colorado Trial Lawyers Association, in an amicus brief filed in the Colorado Supreme Court Miller case, said the increase in chairlift fatalities could be connected to increased traffic at Colorado ski areas, older lift equipment “and / or less oversight by the ski area operators.”
“Permitting ski area operators to have blanket immunity waters down the safety goals of the Ski Safety Act at a time where our resorts are at their highest capacity,” the trial lawyers’ brief reads. “And while not all chair lift fatalities or injuries are caused by the negligence of ski area operators, the public policy of our state demands that ski area operators be held accountable for the injuries caused by the dangers they create.”
Large verdicts against ski resorts — there have been a few in Oregon in recent years — are raising concern over insurance availability and costs, especially for smaller independent resorts. Safehold Special Risk, a major insurance provider for ski resorts in 37 states, in June said it would no longer insure Oregon resorts following large payouts to injured skiers.
The Oregon Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that a liability waiver signed by a skier who was injured at Mount Bachelor was an “unconscionable contract” and unenforceable. Big lawsuits have followed, including an $11.4 million award in 2022 for a mountain biker injured at Mt. Hood Skibowl. Oregon lawmakers this summer did not approve legislation that would have made liability waivers more enforceable.
Michael Reitzell, the president and CEO of the National Ski Areas Association, said resorts continue to invest in education and training that revolves around guest safety. The association’s national lift safety campaign is growing with videos helping skiers better understand lift operations.
“At the same time, shifts in liability law and insurance markets present challenges that extend beyond any single ski area, and can disproportionally impact smaller, independent ski areas,” Reitzell said in an emailed statement. “Chairlift safety is a shared responsibility between ski areas and guests—which is why consistent safety practices, like rider education around chairlift use, are so important—both for protecting guests and for preserving the vitality of skiing and snowboarding for future generations.”
Braley dismissed the idea that a ruling against liability waivers would pose a chilling effect on operators who would have to raise costs to cover increased insurance premiums and possibly exclude children from ski areas.
“There can be no chilling effect to expect a ski resort to comply with safety standards required by the Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board,” Braley said. “This is a victory for ski safety in Colorado, just like that Supreme Court decision was.”