Safety and Liability Rules in European Ski Areas

Video 11/12: Parte I; Parte II; Parte III; Parte IV; Parte V.

The main goal of the workshop is to gather in Trento a group of legal and economic scholars from Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Holland, UK, Poland, and Italy, providing a first academic venue for canvassing and discussing the legal and economic issues surrounding the pursuit of safety in the European ski areas, with an overall focus on how well the rules of civil liability and the regulations enforced by the national courts of the European Member states represented in the workshop score when considered in light of the goal of the optimal distribution of the social costs of ski accidents.

One of the desirable goals of the workshop is to assess to what extent existing differences among the Member states, as to the legal rules deployed to increase the safety of ski areas, may affect the competition in the market of winter tourism destinations within the EU, suggesting the feasibility of drafting uniform rules at the European level affecting the level of safety of ski areas and the civil liability of skiers and ski area operators.

There is reason to believe that this goal is grounded, and that at the European level (but sometimes also within a given national legal system, due to the heterogeneity of regional regulations), different approaches to the fundamental issue of the appropriate level of safety and liability in the ski areas may lead to uncompetitive costs, affecting not only the competition game among operators, but also the level of protection unevenly offered to European consumers who choose and buy the services needed to fulfil their recreational desire of skiing.

Germane to these goals is the scientific intention to create a stable international network of scholars interested to develop data on the topic and to study them in comparative and interdisciplinary vein.

Topics | Scientific program

Location

Faculty of Law main building, University of Trento, Conference Room, Via Verdi, 53 - Trento - Italy

Language

• English
• French 

Among the general themes and the more specific questions that participants will address in their presentations, answering in light of the respective national experiences but with a comparative slant, are the following:

1. Unsafe skiing and its costs: data on ski accidents and their economic costs.
2. Benefits of skiing: the economics of skiing; returns to the local mountain communities (data and patterns of evolution).
3. Managing a safe ski area: public or private ownership?; institutional paths of management of the ski area; ex ante safety provisions; administrative regulations.
4. Issuing safety: the role of social norms, technical norms, legislation and courts; possible issues entailed by the interplay of local and regional rules with national laws.
5. Perceiving safety: cognitive issues; the interplay b/w safer slopes and the skiers’ escape from perceived safety; the booming attraction of wild paths, free ride and extra slope skiing; the “caveat skier” solution and the ski area operator role when skiers gain altitude for free riding buying ski passes; defining the ski area borders: where the obligation of safety ends?
6. Patrolling safety: the role of new technologies; other tools to prevent risky behaviours on the slopes; the cost of supervising and policing the ski area, and to provide for rescue and emergency services for skiers: public or private approaches?
7. Assessing safety: civil liability for accidents occurring on the slopes; paths of litigation (collisions among skiers; skiers vs. ski area operators); role of contractual obligations; role of extra contractual obligations; evidentiary problems; the role of presumptions; ski accidents and law of consumer protection; jurisdictional and litigation issues in case of collision between skiers of different nationalities; jurisdictional issues (consumer’s forum) in light of the European consumer protection rules when injured skiers/consumers sue ski area operators.
8. Distributing/administering the cost of unsafe skiing: combining insurance models on the snow; first party insurance for skiers; voluntary third party insurance (for skiers and ski area operators); mandatory insurance (for skiers and ski area operators). 

Scientific program

Registration

Registration form - on line is requested for the date of 11^th December 2015.
 
The collaboration of ANEF (Associazione Italiana Esercenti Funiviari) is gratefully acknowledged.