According to statistics, the main causes of ski accidents are users’ lack of knowledge of the rules of conduct for skiers, slope classification and signage, but there may also be slope operator’s liability. In this regard, the Italian Supreme Court in an order dated 05/19/2022 no. 16223 qualified the bargaining relationship between the user and the equipped area’s operator – insofar as the facility’s operator also assumes, as a rule, the role of slopes’ manager served by the ski lift – as an atypical ski pass contract, which allows the skier access for a fee to a ski complex in order to use it freely and unlimitedly for the conventionally established time, and found that the operator was under an obligation to safely maintain the slope and could be held liable for damages suffered by the contractors as a result of poor slope maintenance, on the basis of contractual liability for breach of contract.
This was noted by the Court in evaluating a case in which a skier sued the ski slope’s operator to compensation for damage resulting from a ski accident, when the injured fell with personal injuries, while skiing on one of the slopes run by the defendant company. During the investigation’s course, it was found that the accident was caused by a snowdrift, formed near a snow cannon, the height of about a meter and a half, so wide to cover a large track’s portion and cannot be avoided by those who came from the injured man’s direction.
