Fear of Lawsuits Brings More Warning Signs, Insurance Rules in National Parks

Mountain climbing and white-water rafting may be scary to the novice, but experts have something to fear too--personal injury lawsuits if an experience or a piece of equipment leads to tragedy.

National Park officials are keeping danger signals up in their areas and their policy manuals, hoping to head off multimillion-dollar jury awards, although some say the awards flood may have crested.

“We are definitely putting up more warning signs,” said Jack M. Morehead, associate director of operations at the National Park Service. “We’re making sure all roads are built to standard--more so than in the past.”

The service also continues to require sizable liability insurance policies for private guides in potentially hazardous activities from horseback riding to river running and mountain climbing, Morehead said.

“This puts a lot of small operators out of business,” he said. “They can’t afford that kind of insurance.”

And the fact that an injured person may collect from a guide’s insurance company does not prevent the victim from suing the government as well, Morehead said.

Insurance costs have skyrocketed in recent years, said Dan Ducich, senior vice president and chief financial officer of REI, the nationwide recreational equipment marketer based in Kent, Wash. REI’s insurance costs were $150,000 in 1984, and about $800,000 last year, he said.

Such costs make businesses think twice before bringing out an improved product, fearing that a lawyer may one day portray innovation as recklessness, Ducich said.

“Until someone does something stupid with something, you don’t really know how that could have happened,” he said.

The risk of huge settlements also reduces the number of companies willing to supply such products as helmets, he said.

One key legal issue is the doctrine of reasonable implied assumption of risk--”that you may get hurt if you play, and that’s nobody’s fault but the participant’s,” said John E. Fagan, a Tahoe City, Calif., lawyer who represents ski industry clients.

Courts had been weakening that principle by tending to rule that operators were negligent in providing for safety, but in recent years courts have been swinging back, he said.

“The last two years have been rather favorable in that regard,” Morehead said. “The court has found people have to assume a certain amount of knowledge that, if you stand on a high peak in the middle of a thunderstorm, you’re going to get zapped.”

Fagan and Morehead attribute this to increasingly skilled and specialized defense lawyers.

To decrease liability, businesses need to do more to educate people about risks they assume, to increase participants’ skills in their activities and to be consistent in quality control of products, Ducich said.

Industry officials can protect themselves with clear releases in which the participant agrees not to hold the industry or officials liable, Fagan says.

The bottom line probably is that we are not more litigious than ever, said personal injury specialist Larry E. Coben of Philadelphia. “There are a lot of people who suffer injury who still do not bring lawsuits.”

Instead, he believes, people are more safety-conscious and expect the things they do as well as the equipment they use to be designed with safety in mind.