Can You Sue a Ski Resort for Your Injury in Colorado?

If you were hurt on a Colorado ski slope, you may be wondering whether you have any legal options. Resorts hand you waivers when you buy a lift ticket. Ski patrol tells you accidents happen. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you might assume that signing up to ski means signing away your right to hold anyone accountable. That assumption is wrong, and a recent landmark court ruling proves it.

The short answer is yes, you can sue a Colorado ski resort for your injury under certain circumstances. But the path to a successful claim requires understanding a specific set of state laws, knowing what conduct crosses the line from inherent risk into actual negligence, and acting quickly before evidence disappears. This guide breaks all of that down in plain language.

The Colorado Ski Safety Act: What It Actually Says

The foundation of any skiing injury claim in Colorado is the Colorado Ski Safety Act. This law has governed the relationship between ski resorts and their guests for decades, and it does two things that seem to work against each other: it protects resorts from liability for certain risks, and it holds resorts accountable for others.

On the protection side, the Act defines a list of inherent risks of skiing. These are conditions and dangers that exist naturally on a mountain and are considered unavoidable parts of the sport. Natural variations in terrain, changes in snow conditions, rocks, trees, and other features of the natural landscape all fall into this category. If you hit a tree on a marked trail because trees exist on mountains, that is generally considered an inherent risk that the resort is not responsible for.

But the Act also places real, enforceable duties on resort operators. Ski areas must maintain their lifts and equipment, mark trail difficulty accurately, properly close unsafe runs, warn skiers of known non-natural hazards, and ensure their staff operates safely on the mountain. When a resort fails to meet those duties, it steps outside the protection the Ski Safety Act provides. That is when a legal claim becomes viable.

The Landmark Ruling That Changed the Game for Injured Skiers

For years, ski resorts relied heavily on liability waivers to shut down injury claims before they ever reached a jury. When you bought a season pass or a lift ticket, you likely signed a document that purported to release the resort from responsibility for almost anything that happened to you on the mountain. Courts frequently enforced those waivers, leaving seriously injured skiers with no legal recourse.

That changed in a significant way in 2024. The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, ruled that ski area liability waivers cannot shield resorts from claims of negligence per se. Negligence per se means a resort violated a statute specifically designed to protect public safety, such as the Ski Safety Act or the Passenger Tramway Safety Act. The case centered on Annie Miller, a teenager who was left paralyzed after falling 30 feet from a chairlift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort in 2022.

The court found that allowing a private waiver to override the duties imposed by state safety statutes would undermine the entire purpose of those laws. In the words of the majority opinion, the Ski Safety Act and the Passenger Tramway Safety Act create a legal framework intended to protect against exactly the kinds of injuries Annie suffered. A resort cannot contract its way out of following the law.

In September 2025, a Colorado jury awarded $12.4 million to the Miller family after nine days of testimony, finding that lift attendants had violated safety standards. The verdict is believed to be the first of its kind against a ski resort for failing to meet lift safety requirements, and it signals a meaningful shift in how these cases can be litigated going forward.

What Resort Negligence Actually Looks Like

Understanding the distinction between inherent risk and actionable negligence is the most important concept in any ski injury case. Inherent risks are things resorts cannot control. Negligence is a resort’s failure to do what a reasonable, careful operator should do. Here are the kinds of situations that can cross the line into legal liability:

Defective or Poorly Maintained Ski Lifts

Chairlifts, gondolas, and T-bars are mechanical systems that require regular inspection and maintenance. When a lift malfunctions because of missed inspections, ignored mechanical warnings, or improper operation by resort employees, that is not an inherent risk of skiing. It is a failure of the resort’s duty to maintain safe equipment. The Annie Miller case is the most prominent recent example, but lift-related injuries have been at the center of multiple significant legal claims across Colorado.

Unmarked or Inadequately Marked Hazards

A rock buried under natural snow is an inherent risk. A snowmaking hydrant left across a groomed run without a protective cover or warning sign is not. Neither is a snowcat or resort vehicle driven recklessly across a trail open to skiers. When resorts create hazards through their own operations and fail to mark or remove them, they are responsible for the injuries that result.

Improper Trail Closure or Inadequate Signage

The Ski Safety Act specifically requires resorts to mark trail difficulty and to clearly sign when a run is closed or when unusual conditions exist. Sending skiers onto an improperly marked trail or failing to close a run with known dangerous conditions exposes the resort to liability for any injuries that follow.

Negligent Ski School Instruction or Supervision

Resorts that operate ski schools take on a heightened duty of care for their students, particularly children. Inadequate instructor training, improper group supervision, or failure to match students with appropriate terrain can all form the basis of a negligence claim when injuries result.

Reckless Resort Employees on the Mountain

Resort employees operate snowmobiles, snowcats, and other equipment on the same terrain where guests are skiing. When an employee acts recklessly and injures a skier, the resort bears responsibility for that employee’s conduct under standard principles of employer liability.

What About the Waiver You Signed?

This is the question most injured skiers ask first, and it is understandable. Waivers are presented as routine paperwork when you buy a ticket or pass, and their language is designed to seem all-encompassing. But the 2024 Colorado Supreme Court ruling made clear that waivers have real limits.

Waivers cannot protect a resort from claims based on violations of the Ski Safety Act or the Passenger Tramway Safety Act. They also cannot shield a resort from claims involving gross negligence, which is conduct that goes beyond carelessness into willful disregard for the safety of others. And courts evaluate waivers carefully for specific language, clarity, and whether the particular risk at issue was meaningfully disclosed to the signer.

The bottom line is that a waiver is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of a legal analysis that an experienced attorney needs to conduct based on the specific facts of what happened to you.

How to Prove a Resort Was Negligent

Every personal injury claim, including one against a ski resort, requires proving four core elements. Your attorney must establish all of them to succeed:

1. Duty of Care: The resort owed you a legal duty to act reasonably and safely. This is generally straightforward since resorts owe a duty to all guests on their property.
2. Breach of Duty: The resort failed to meet that duty. This is where evidence like maintenance records, inspection logs, slope grooming reports, lift operation records, and employee training documentation becomes critical.
3. Causation: The resort’s breach directly caused your injury, not an unrelated condition or your own independent decision.
4. Damages: You suffered real, measurable harm as a result, including medical expenses, lost income, pain and suffering, and other losses.

Building this case requires moving quickly. Slope conditions change overnight. Lift records are overwritten. Resort employees who witnessed an incident move on. Surveillance footage gets deleted on rolling schedules. The sooner an attorney can begin preserving evidence, the stronger your case will be.

Comparative Fault and What It Means for Your Claim

One concern many injured skiers have is that the resort will argue they were partially responsible for what happened. Colorado follows a system called modified comparative negligence. Under this rule, you can still recover compensation as long as you are found to be less than 50 percent at fault for the accident. Your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault, but it is not eliminated unless you are found to be equally or more responsible than the resort.

This means that even if a resort argues you were skiing too fast, or that you ignored a sign, you may still have a valid and substantial claim. An attorney who understands how resort insurers build comparative fault arguments can work to minimize the fault attributed to you and protect the full value of your case.

Common Injuries in Colorado Ski Resort Accidents

Ski resort negligence can cause injuries ranging from serious to catastrophic. The cases our attorneys handle most often involve:

• Traumatic brain injuries, including concussions and severe TBIs even when helmets are worn
• Spinal cord injuries and paralysis from high-speed impacts or lift falls
• ACL, MCL, and other serious knee injuries from terrain or equipment failures
• Broken wrists, arms, legs, and clavicles
• Crush injuries from lift malfunctions or equipment contact
• Severe lacerations from unmarked hazards or exposed resort equipment

Many of these injuries require surgery, extended rehabilitation, and ongoing medical care. The compensation available in a successful claim against a resort is meant to account for all of it, not just the immediate emergency room visit.

How Treviño Law Approaches Ski Resort Cases

At Treviño Law, our approach to ski resort negligence cases starts with preservation. The moment you contact us, we work to secure the records, footage, and documentation that resorts would prefer to let disappear. We bring in ski safety experts who understand industry standards for lift maintenance, slope grooming, and hazard marking. We know how resort insurers build their defenses, and we build our cases specifically to dismantle those defenses.

Attorney Jaime Treviño spent part of his career representing insurance companies and corporate defendants before founding Treviño Law to fight for injured people. That background means we know exactly what the other side is doing and why. It shapes how we investigate, how we negotiate, and how we prepare for trial when a fair settlement is not on the table.

If you want to understand more about what causes these accidents in the first place, our team has put together a detailed resource on the most common causes of skiing accidents in Colorado that covers both resort negligence and skier-on-skier collisions in depth.

And if you are ready to talk about what happened to you specifically, our Denver skiing accident attorneys offer free consultations with no obligation and no fees unless we win your case.

What to Do If You Were Injured at a Colorado Ski Resort

The steps you take in the hours and days after a ski resort injury can make a real difference in how your case develops. Here is what we recommend:

1. Get medical attention immediately, even if your injuries feel minor. Some conditions, especially head and spinal injuries, are not fully apparent right away. A medical record from the day of the accident also documents the injury in a way that is difficult to challenge later.
2. File an incident report with ski patrol or resort management before you leave the mountain. Ask for a copy and keep it.
3. Photograph everything you can access: the hazard, the lift, the trail conditions, your injuries, and any relevant signage or lack thereof.
4. Get contact information from witnesses, including other skiers, resort employees, or anyone who saw what happened.
5. Do not give a recorded statement to the resort’s insurance company without speaking to an attorney first. Adjusters are trained to ask questions in ways that build a comparative fault argument against you.
6. Contact a lawyer as soon as possible. The two-year statute of limitations for most Colorado personal injury claims sounds like a long time, but evidence disappears much faster than that.

The Bottom Line

Colorado ski resorts are not above the law, and the Colorado Supreme Court made that clearer than ever in 2024. The Ski Safety Act protects resorts from claims involving true inherent risks of the sport, but it was never intended to give resorts a free pass to maintain unsafe lifts, leave hazards unmarked, or send reckless employees onto trails full of guests. When a resort’s negligence causes serious harm, the law provides a path to accountability and compensation.

If you were hurt at a Colorado ski resort and you are not sure whether you have a case, the best thing you can do is talk to an attorney who handles these claims regularly. At Treviño Law, those conversations are always free, and there is no financial risk in reaching out. Call us at (303) 408-5000 or contact us online to schedule your consultation.