Lawsuit a threat to trails
CYCLISTS FEAR FOR SPORT
By TRACY MCLAUGHLIN, SPECIAL TO THE SUN
A MOUNTAIN biker who launched a million-dollar lawsuit after falling off his bike has lit a fire under Collingwood area bike enthusiasts who fear the suit will close their trails. James Leone is suing the Toronto Outing Club and its Kolapore Uplands Wilderness Ski Trails Committee as well as the Town of The Blue Mountains, the Grey-Bruce Trails Network and the province for an accident he had while mountain biking last August.
The 31-year-old personal injury lawyer from Toronto claims he suffered fractured vertebrae and several soft-tissue injuries when his bicycle came to an abrupt stop after hitting a hole in the trail, sending him over the handlebars.
“It’s a crying shame,” said “die-hard” mountain biker Mark Derrick, who helped organize a meeting of concerned bikers in Collingwood yesterday.
“We have hundreds of miles of amazing trails in this area and most of us realize that if you take on this sport, you take on a challenge and a risk.” He said his wife, Lynn, has dislocated her shoulder by falling on the trails twice but never considered a lawsuit.
“This suit does cause a concern that the trails will be threatened,” said trail specialist with the International Mountain Bike Association, Laura Woolner. “The case could set a precedent for other cases in Ontario and that could have an enormous impact on non-profit clubs who will have to purchase huge amounts of insurance to keep trails open. Essentially it could shut them down,” she said.
Lawyers don’t sue people. People sue people. (Ok so this guy who’s suing happens to be a lawyer too. But that’s not what’s making him sue. Even if he weren’t a lawyer, he would just hire one.)
Sure the lawsuit’s dumb. It should get thrown out of court. If lawsuits weren’t money makers, lawyers wouldn’t bring them. In the end, plaintiffs decide to sue, judges decide to allow the suits to go forward, and juries decide to award damages. Lawyers just go along for the ride.
Blaming the lawyer is like a fat person blaming the refrigerator for being too easy to open.
Full disclosure: I’m a lawyer. But I don’t do injury stuff.
Holy crap, you mean that mountain bike trails are not smooth paved trails and may have rocks, holes, ditches, and tree limbs on it? I am in law school and lawsuits like this make me embarrassed to tell people what I study.
he needs to go for the jugular on this one…sue the wheel maker for not making a wheel large enough to accomodate for all sizes of potholes and the bike maker for not equipping them with airbags…sue the landowner for not filling said hole…and the educational system for not giving him ENOUGH OF A FUCKING BRAIN so as to help him avoid the pothole in the first place…hell…sue his parents for the same thing…they should have done a better job in raising the stupid shit. Too bad the hole didn’t finish him off (not a nice thing to say I know but this kind of thing is so beyond stupid it needs a new category)
old Willy was right let’s kill all the lawyers let’s kill em tonight (jokin:-)
Leone is suing the outing club, the ski trails committee, the regional trails network, the local municipality and the province (which owns the land where he encountered the alleged hole) " everything but the sky above and the Earth itself. He wants $1,150,000 in damages for expenses and lost income as a result of a fractured vertebra he says he suffered, while his co-plaintiff “his wife, Ashley, who wasn’t biking” “sustained a loss of guidance, care and companionship” she might reasonably have expected if he hadn’t run into said hole.
Leone’s stated position is that, whether they like it or not, the volunteer organizations and the province, by permitting the trails to exist on its land, are responsible for creating “a situation of danger from which the plaintiff, despite all reasonable efforts and precautions was unable to extricate himself,” and that they “failed to take reasonable care to protect the plaintiff from the unusual danger, of which they knew or ought to have known.”
you’re MOUNTAIN biking…it’s not like you’re…f-it, i’m not even going to start…
it’s the morons like this that make me hate society so much…1/2 the population of the world is below average intelligence…i think this tard falls in the bottom 1%.
if this doesn’t get thrown out of a laughing court I see a horrible death by track pump in this guys future…so long as I can find where he lives. I’m not much of an off road guys (yet) but if my playground was in jeopardy like this I’d be looking to get a petition going asap to counter this stupid shits suit. Any lawyers think this twit has a case?
Lawyers don’t sue people. People sue people. (Ok so this guy who’s suing happens to be a lawyer too. But that’s not what’s making him sue. Even if he weren’t a lawyer, he would just hire one.)
Sure the lawsuit’s dumb. It should get thrown out of court. If lawsuits weren’t money makers, lawyers wouldn’t bring them. In the end, plaintiffs decide to sue, judges decide to allow the suits to go forward, and juries decide to award damages. Lawyers just go along for the ride.
Blaming the lawyer is like a fat person blaming the refrigerator for being too easy to open.
Full disclosure: I’m a lawyer. But I don’t do injury stuff. I’m a lawyer, too. We certainly aid and abet this sort of suit, but it takes a willing plaintiff, a willing judge and a willing jury or a carrier that pays off far more than nuisance value for this sort of case to go forward. The lawyers are just symptoms of the problem that results from people not taking responsibility for their own actions, not the problem itself.
Anyone can file a lawsuit so it is basically meaningless when you hear on the news that a suit was filed. Only pay attention to verdicts or big settlements.
I once defended a suit brought against a newspaper by a gentleman who claimed that they were controlling his mind and destroying his life through the daily horoscopes.
Actually, the merits of his claim were never addressed. We got it dismissed on a technicality . . . . .
The wacky plaintiffs are the scary suits. The guy who killed that judge’s motion and husband was just a crank plaintiff who thought there was a big conspiracy against him. That’s almost scarier than some white supremacy group.
I have one (court appointed) client who is in a federal medical center. He thought I was trying to kill him and was in cahoots with the judge and the prosecutors. I’ve spent a lot of time in small rooms with this guy. I’m glad he never engaged in “self defense.”
Back to the subject of blaming the lawyers: The whole routine reminds me of how we complain about the terrible trash that Hollywood puts out and the terrible things that our politicians do. But in the end, we have absolute control over them. Hollywood makes products that we buy. If we don’t buy them, Hollywood won’t make them. Same goes for politicians. We can fill Congress with Tom Delays or John McCains or Bill Clintons or whatever. It’s our choice. What we shouldn’t do is complain when we get what we really want instead of what we say we want.
Also of note is that its Kolapore. Advanced MTB trails not a rail trail. Some of the toughest trails in the province are at Kolapore and the adjacent Three Stages. This is ungroomed single track going up and down the Niagara Escarpment from Osler Bluff to Thornbury.
There are also lots of rail trails in Collingwood, which may be where this hot shot should have been riding. Anyone want to guess how many times the average rider on those trails falls off in a year? Anyone else picture him riding a carbon framed full suspension rig, as pristine as the day it left the shop?
I’d be willing to bet that he has no desire to see this go to court. He’s probably just hoping he can get one or more of the defendants to settle and pay him some money. A million bucks seems a little ridiculous, but if he has enough defendants, and they all agree to settle, he could make some decent bank.
It’s sad. Looks like the litigious craze has even affected our neighbors to the north. Funny, I always thought it was uniquely American.
I’m definitely not a lawyer… but here’s my idea. Those who are named in the suit need to slap this jerk with a counter suit (probably the wrong word) for “harassment, libel, slander, whatever the hell would apply”. Make him lose something for being such a dipshit. He has basically nothing to lose, and that’s why these stupid suits are all around. Make him pay for being such an ass. Also, get a group of mtb’s together to laugh and point at him so he feels stupid and ashamed for being such a damn baby about throwing a tantrum for falling off his bike.
There’s a big difference between the courts and Hollywood. You can choose not to watch movies or tv. If you get sued, you have no choice. You must settle or fight.
That’s a good point. You’re right that an individual can opt out of Hollywood but cannot opt out of our legal system.
But as a community, we can change the legal system quite easily. For example, we could adopt loser-pays rules like they have in Great Britain, in which the loser in an action has to pay the winners’ attorneys fees. Or we could make it harder to drag out lawsuits. Whatever it might be, we (as a society) write the rules, we appoint or elect the judges, and we sit on the juries that award damages.
I thought this was just a problem in the US! Is the legal system a problem? Tort reform? Can there be a class action suit against this guy for ruining other peoples fun?
we think a bunch of coaches should get together and sue his balls off for ‘loss of potential revenue, and damaging livelihood’…if this douce bag gets all the trails closed, what about potential clients that you may have that would mountain bike…
I’m not a lawyer and I’m probably going to get some hate replys for saying this, but this guy may have been a victim. Note everyone has the ability to mountain bike difficult terrain. Should he be suing for million, probably not and I see an ethical issue with this.
However, if The Toronto Outing Club and/or Kolapore Uplands Wilderness Ski Trails Committee did not inform this idiot on the dangers of riding these trails then that is an issue. Common sense would tell you that mountain biking is dangerous, however this would not be an issue if the Club and/or Trails Committee would have made this guy sign a waiver indicating all the risks and dangers.
By organizing a ride or making a trail available, there should be some responsibility on the club and/or committee to make sure that the trails they make available are “reasonably” well maintained. Is a hole in the trail “reasonable”? Maybe. However IF the hole in the trail was the only hole on an otherwise very flat and very easy trail, they that may be an issue.
As an example, here in Ohio where I live, the state transportation department will reimburse you for a flat tire that was the direct result of a pothole in the road. Same thing here, if this ‘hole’ was out of place and maybe new, then this guy may be right to sue. By him suing he is making for saver trails for the rest of us, or at least will cause clubs/committees to better inform us about the trails.
FILING a lawsuit means nothing. The only thing you need to file a lawsuit is the same thing you need to enter a triathlon - - - - - somewhere between $50 and $200. In both cases, the mere fact someone laid out some cash means nothing. In my state there is the added requirement that your “complaint” be typed but in many places you can still file a handwritten complaint.
So every time you read “a lawsuit was filed” think “an entry fee was paid by X to enter ZZZ triathlon.” Don’t start getting all exited about how someone did in the race before the race has even started.
You guys are ready to change the rules because they are “unfair” before the race has even started. From what little I know of this area of the law in the US, much less Canada which is both way more pro defendant and hands out much smaller verdicts even if you win, my guess is this guy has about as much chance of “winning” as your fat neighbor does in finishing an IM.
Of course, there is always the possiblility that some club members had a few too many Molsons and dug a hole in the trial “just for fun” which would be a different story . . . . . . …
These things are only interesting if you know all the facts. In my professional experience, news reports about newly filed lawsuits NEVER give you all facts so just ignore them.
Maybe that’s why MTB-ing in Ohio sucks so bad too! (well, it does)
How 'bout common sense and *personal responsibility. *
I suck at MTB-ing (at least by VT standards but in Ohio I was Ned Overend, well maybe not, but it was way different). So when I moved here, I was doing some MTB-ing at the local park which is shared state forest land and personal property in a nice little symbiotic relationship. 2nd day of riding I launch myself off of a water bar (that I wasn’t given written notice was there) and snap! there goes my collarbone. Never in a million years did it even cross my mind to sue the guy who’s land I was riding on (or the state or whoever owned that particular parcel or whoever built the water bar or the bike club that gives out the maps, etc.). All I thought was “Damn, I do suck at MTB-ing”…my fault, I pay the price.
Somebody’s mothers needed to do a little better job raising little Johnny that the world isn’t a perfect place…screws fall out all the time. Live with it.