Can You Really Sue if You Get Hurt? Skateboard Lawsuits

Short answer: Probably not. Since the early 90s, courts have limited how much people can recover for injuries from risky recreational activities, California lists skateboarding as a “hazardous recreational activity” on public property, and property owners generally don’t owe trespassers much. The real skateboarding lawsuits I found all had something else going on, like a dangerous road or a school that made an injury worse.

This is a skater’s look at real cases, not legal advice. I’m not a lawyer, and laws vary by state.

If you’ve skated for any amount of time, you’ve been kicked out of a spot and heard something about liability or insurance. The idea is that if you fall and get hurt, you’ll sue the owner. Nick_gnar asked me if there are actually any successful lawsuits like that, the kind property owners are so afraid of. So is it really possible to sue if you get hurt skating somewhere?

A tale of two neighbors

Here’s a story. There’s a crazy guy who likes seeing kids get hurt, and he lives next to a school. He gives the kids skateboards and builds a skatepark in his backyard. Then he plants explosives in it. The kids come over to skate and he blows them up. Technically, they were trespassing.

Now compare that to another guy who lives next to a school. He has a little downhill spot on the sidewalk in his backyard. He sees kids skating on it, so he puts up a fence and some signs.

Those are two very different situations, and the law treats them differently. The law is generally reasonable. The crazy lawsuits you hear about are sensationalized.

The Hazardous Recreational Activity list

Some states have a list of hazardous activities, like California. From the book The Skateboard: The Good, the Rad, and the Gnarly: An Illustrated History:

“…but out of that meeting I discovered that there existed the California Trial Attorneys Association, which kept track of all liability claims and cases in California. I spent $150 for a report that revealed that in southern California, over the period of time from 1970 to 1990 there had been zero lawsuits involving skateboarders suing public entities. None. Eighteen different SoCal counties and not one lawsuit.

This was how I discovered the HRA - Hazardous Recreational Activity list: An actual list of activities, including tree climbing and spelunking, that eliminated a government agency’s liability for injuries sustained while doing anything on the HRA list”

TransWorld covered this back in 2000:

“To protect themselves, many states are enacting legislation that limits the liability of government entities and their employees in such situations. California has recently classified skateboarding as a “hazardous recreational activity,” a status enjoyed by a few other sports like hang gliding and surfing. Such a classification makes it more difficult to win lawsuits against the government for injuries incurred on public property. In the past, government entities have often paid small amounts to settle those lawsuits because it proved less expensive than defending against them in court.”

So that’s it, right? You can’t sue? It’s not that simple. The HRA list applies to the government, like if you’re skating at the courthouse, and it’s California only.

It’s not just laws, though. Attorney David Amell points out that starting in the early 1990s, courts throughout the country set up common law doctrines that limit how much people can recover for injuries from “hazardous” or “risky” recreational activities. The California Supreme Court led that movement with its decision in Knight v. Jewett in 1992, and negligence claims for sports injuries have been limited a lot since then.

What about trespassers?

You’ve probably heard that a burglar can sue you if he gets hurt in your house. That’s not exactly true. Trespassers are people who don’t have permission or a legal right to be on the property, and in general, homeowners don’t have a duty to protect them from dangers. A burglar can’t sue for tripping on a toy car or getting hit by a falling TV.

There are some exceptions, though:

• Known trespassers. A homeowner can’t anticipate some random burglar. But if there are signs that people trespass regularly, the owner has a duty to warn about known dangers on the property.
• Booby traps. You can be sued for willful and wanton conduct that injures a trespasser, so don’t set up traps meant to hurt anyone.
• Deadly force. You might be able to use deadly force to defend your life in some states, but you generally can’t use it just to protect property.
• Attractive nuisances. Things like a pool or a trampoline, which are likely to draw kids in, come with extra responsibility.

So there’s some liability even for trespassers, in certain circumstances. If you know someone might trespass, you can’t have dangerous stuff sitting around. Say you know kids cut through your backyard to get to the park. You can’t have a gun range right there. You’d need signs and fences, and you’d have to make your best effort to keep people out. Putting up a fence and then ignoring the skateboarders isn’t necessarily good enough.

But think about a place like Hollywood High. There’s a big fence, and they probably have signs up. It should be pretty much impossible to sue them.

So why is everyone so paranoid?

Here’s David Amell again, talking about skateparks:

“The fear of liability has prevented private and public entities from encouraging or allowing risky recreational activities,” despite liability-limiting statutes passed by legislatures.

There are plenty of stories online, too. One I found was about a kid in West Virginia who got hurt skating in a neighbor’s driveway. The parents sued, and the neighbor’s homeowners policy had to pay the medical bills. But with stories like that, there’s usually some other circumstance, like the kid was invited over or his toy was over there or something.

Even the McDonald’s hot coffee case, the go-to example of a crazy lawsuit, had a lot more going on than the headlines made it sound.

Real skateboarding lawsuits

I wasn’t able to find any solid cases of a skater suing over a spot, but here are some examples that come close.

A kid sues his middle school over a skateboarding accident. That sounds bad, but what really happened? Staff left skateboards in the gym, and the kid broke his ankle on them. Then the school wouldn’t let him call his parents, and he had to walk on his broken ankle to get ice for himself.

Skateboarding in a parking lot leads to a half million dollar settlement. Two little kids were skateboarding in a parking lot that went downhill. They lost control of their speed, couldn’t stop and ended up in traffic, and one of the kids died. The families sued the city for not having a sidewalk or shoulder there, which forced them into the road itself. That’s a different story than a sprained ankle from grinding a curb somewhere.

A kid gets hurt skateboarding at Target. This one happened inside the store, so there’s a question of liability over the stuff they sell. A judge wouldn’t let Target get the case thrown out, but I couldn’t find whether the family won or not. The point is that legal fees add up, even when a case goes nowhere.

So can you really sue?

Probably not. Property owners are more paranoid than they have to be, assuming liability is the real reason they’re kicking you out. It might be about property damage, or scaring away customers. But stranger things have happened. There’s always some crazy fluke.

Sources

1. The Skateboard: The Good, the Rad, and the Gnarly: An Illustrated History(Ben Marcus)
2. Premises Liability: Who Is Responsible?(FindLaw)
3. Legal How-To: Keeping Trespassers Off Your Property(FindLaw)
4. Is It Legal to Defend Your Business From Looters?(FindLaw)
5. Skateboarding accident leads to lawsuit(West Virginia Record)
6. Target can't dismiss injury lawsuit brought by family of child hurt skateboarding inside Vernon Hills store(Cook County Record)