Fear of liability closes down NJ sledding spots

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It's one of the simple, most wonderful pleasures of life: zooming down a snow-covered hill just fast enough for a touch of fear to quicken your pulse. Maybe it's a solo run. Maybe you're clinging to a loved one as you tear down the hill tandem. Surely, sledding is one of those things that makes it worth toughing it out and living in New Jersey when sunnier climes often beckon.


Unfortunately, it's getting tougher and tougher to find a place to do it. For the past two years on Ledger Live, we've taken viewers suggestions and hit the road in search of New Jersey's best sledding hills. But more and more, we found, the hills that have thrilled generations of sledders are now closed.

Lawsuits filed by injured sledders, it seems, have struck fear in the hearts of municipal and county government officials, prompting them to simply ban sledding at some of the state's erstwhile sledding meccas. On today's webcast, we look at two of them - Galloping Hill Golf Course in Kenilworth and Camp Dawson in Montville Township - and compare two childhood sledding crashes, decades apart, that ended in two very different ways, shedding some light on how we got to a point where some of the best sledding hills in the state sit snow covered and silent.


In case you missed 'em, here's a look at our two previous episodes - our 2009 and 2010 chapters in the endless quest for New Jersey's best sledding hills.

http://www.nj.com/ledgerlive/index.ssf/2011/01/slopes_behind_ropes_fear_of_la.html
 
Too bad I think personaly..I remember many fun times growing up in Wis sledding and saucering down hills. An injured child is Never a good thing, but sadly our society is so law-suit happy, and always looks for someone else to blame. Kids can't be kids anymore in many simple ways. Sad...
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As a kid, if you got injured you dealt with it. We sled on other people's property all the time and many injuries- none super serious. Today, if my property would be amicable to sledding, I wouldn't let any non-relatives on it.

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On certain private property health insurers actually are doing the suing of the property insurance.
 
This is true. NJ is a sue-happy state for the most part. Now sure how it is in other states, but even Halloween is "dead" in my area Passaic/Morris Counties. Last year the hills were practically empty even in "known" state/city run parks which were always a sledding dream as a child.


They should just make it so you can't sue for a recreational issue. How about sueing yourselves for being idiots and not realizing sledding down a hill on your little brothers back wasn't a good idea. Or trying to snow board on a sled. How low can people go
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Saying public property/land. Seriously how are you going to file suite?


Kid/Person: The hill was to steep and dangerous. I went down the hill and it caught my sled and caused me to flip and roll down the hill. I broke my wrist and the hill should not be that steep!!



Lawyer: You do realize the land cannot harm you intentionally and in no way can you prove the "land" at fault. You are the one that "chose" to utilize that land and therefore understand the risks involved in such a recreational activity. Secondly the hill you speak of is a natural creation/formation.


I swear I am starting to loathe and hate our race. Things like this article really show how low we have gotten.
 
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Originally Posted By: CivicFan
What race? This is a uniquely American phenomenon - the human race is not doomed.

I can't say I've ever heard of a municipality getting sued for a sledding injury up here.
We did have a hill where I think 40mph was easily attainable and then you'd go 200' on the flat and out onto the road...
They put in a line of trees and a ditch about half way up though, which made the hill semi safe, and chose not to close it down.
 
That's different. we are talking about litigious society, not a repressive government regime.
 
A lot of the suing is done by insurance company against each other. If you have a health insurance and you broke your leg sledding down a frozen road, the health insurance company will try to minimize its own payout by suing the property owner's liability insurance company.

As a whole in a society that has high insurance cost due to high medical cost and a bunch of lawyers living off lawsuit, it is probably cheaper to discourage risky activity like sledding.

What else do you expect?
 
Originally Posted By: PandaBear
A lot of the suing is done by insurance company against each other. If you have a health insurance and you broke your leg sledding down a frozen road, the health insurance company will try to minimize its own payout by suing the property owner's liability insurance company.

As a whole in a society that has high insurance cost due to high medical cost and a bunch of lawyers living off lawsuit, it is probably cheaper to discourage risky activity like sledding.

What else do you expect?


+1, My son broke his wrist playing around on his bike on the street in front of our house. He was covered under my health insurance plan through work. The first thing they asked is whose property did it happen on?
 
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
That's different. we are talking about litigious society, not a repressive government regime.


What's the difference?
 
Tempest,
you argue that litigation (after the event) is more appropriate than regulation (pre-emptive) - this is your ideal world isn't it ?
 
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
That's different. we are talking about litigious society, not a repressive government regime.


What's the difference?


You seriously do not see any difference?
 
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
Originally Posted By: Tempest
Originally Posted By: CivicFan
That's different. we are talking about litigious society, not a repressive government regime.


What's the difference?


You seriously do not see any difference?


Not really. How is that we have a litigious society? Through government laws. Could many of these useless lawsuits be avoided by proper legislation such as loser pays and others? YES.

But it doesn't because lawsuits are good for lawyers and that money eventually ends up in the pockets of politicians for reelection. It's a corrupt, perverse relationship that the rest of us must pay for.
 
You know that we have both common law and legislative law. The common law is created by the justice system, not the government, through precedent.

As far as the litigious society goes, that is not something that is encouraged by a legislative or executive bodies. It is simply a cultural trait where we want to protect our rights and receive compensation for any damages we or our property suffers. It's probably a derivative of the strong sense of property rights resulting from a strong capitalist belief system.

I guess you can blame the constitution and the way the country was created
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Quote:
I guess you can blame the constitution and the way the country was created

Before there was the ADA, sexual harassment laws, EPA, ad infinitum... you couldn't sue in court because there was no law being broken. And none of those things have anything to do with the Constitution or property rights.

The more laws you have, the easier it is to sue someone. Notice that lawyers are the highest represented profession amongst politicians?

Having lots of laws on the books is good business for lawyers and they send their considerable lobbyist money to those that like to write them.
 
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