When a Chairlift Ride Goes Wrong at Big Bear Mountain Resort
You bought a lift ticket at Snow Summit or Bear Mountain and you trusted the chairlift to bring you back to the top. Instead, the seat dropped out from under you — or your daughter, or your brother, or your partner. Now you are reading this on a phone in a hospital room, in a rental car on Highway 18, or at a kitchen table in the San Bernardino Mountains trying to understand what just happened and whether anyone has to pay for it.
A 21-year-old rider at Big Bear Mountain Resort slipped out of her chairlift seat and dangled in the air for the length of the lift line. Her twin sister and a friend grabbed her arms and held her until the chairs reached the top terminal and ski patrol reached her. The fall was caught on a bystander’s phone. The resort’s first public statement was that “proper safety protocols” had not been followed by the passengers. That statement is the first move in a defense playbook you should know about before you sign anything, talk to any adjuster, or accept a single dollar from the ticket seller or its insurance carrier.
We represent California families after chairlift and tramway injuries at resorts across the state. The legal analysis below is built specifically for the Big Bear Mountain Resort incident and the bigger question of what a California ski lift operator owes the people in its chairs.
The Chairlift at Big Bear Is Not an Ordinary Ride — California Calls It a Common Carrier
Most guests at a ski resort think of the chairlift as a piece of equipment, like the seat on a Ferris wheel. California law treats it differently. Under California Civil Code § 2100, a common carrier is bound to “use the utmost care and diligence” in the transportation of passengers and is “responsible for any negligence” by which injury is caused. The California courts and the state’s Passenger Tramway Safety Orders treat aerial tramways and chairlifts operated for public transportation as common carriers, and the operator’s duty is not the ordinary “reasonable care” owed by a landowner — it is the heightened common-carrier duty of utmost care and diligence.
The reason for that heightened duty is exactly what we saw on the chair at Big Bear. A skier cannot steer, cannot stop, and cannot step out of a moving chair suspended over a fall line. The passenger is completely at the mercy of the equipment, the operator who maintains it, the lift attendant who loads and unloads, and the supervisor who decides when to run the line. California responds to that helplessness by holding the operator to the highest standard of care the state recognizes.
> “A carrier of persons for reward must use the utmost care and diligence to provide safe means and methods of transportation, and is responsible for any negligence by which he causes injury to a passenger.” — California Civil Code § 2100.
That sentence is the spine of a chairlift case at Big Bear. Every other theory below rises out of it or runs alongside it.
The People on the Other Side of the Table
The first thing we do is name the right defendants. Big Bear Mountain Resort is the operating brand, but the corporate structure underneath controls who actually answers in court and where the insurance money sits.
Big Bear Mountain Resort is the trade name for the combined Snow Summit and Bear Mountain ski areas, both operating in the San Bernardino Mountains. The resorts run under a Special Use Permit from the United States Forest Service, which means the operating entity also has federal obligations to the federal land it sits on. The owner and operator is Big Bear Mountain Resort, doing business in California, with the broader parent platform Alterra Mountain Company behind it. Snow Summit and Bear Mountain together comprise the largest ski operation in Southern California.
In any complaint we file we will name, at minimum:
- The operating entity (Big Bear Mountain Resort / Alterra Mountain Company) — the entity that ran the chair, trained the attendant, set the maintenance schedule, and chose the operational protocols. Under California common-carrier law, this is the primary defendant.
- The lift attendant on duty — individually named for negligent operation, training, and supervision. The attendant is the human who watched that chair go over the bullwheel and either engaged the auxiliary stop or failed to do so.
- The lift operations supervisor on shift — for negligent training, supervision, and the decision to keep the line running in conditions that should have stopped it.
- The lift manufacturer and the component supplier — for product-defect theories if the chair, the safety bar, the restraint, the catch arm, the haul rope termination, or the bullwheel/drive system failed in a way that caused the rider to slip. Strict liability for a manufacturing defect does not require proof of negligence; it requires only proof that the lift was defective and the defect caused the injury.
- The forest service permit administrator — generally immune under the Federal Tort Claims Act, but named in preservation letters so the federal inspection record on the affected chair is preserved.
California is a pure comparative-fault state under Civil Code § 1714. That means a jury can assign a percentage of fault to the rider, to the attendant, to the maintenance contractor, and to the resort — and the rider can still recover, reduced by her own percentage. That single rule is why the resort’s first instinct will always be to blame you. We will be ready.
What the Resort Means by “Proper Safety Protocols”
When the operator publicly blames the passengers for not following “proper safety protocols,” it is doing two things at once. It is trying to shift blame, and it is trying to invoke the primary assumption of risk doctrine — the argument that the rider assumed the risk of any inherent danger of the sport and therefore cannot recover.
That argument works for ordinary skiing and snowboarding hazards in California. The California Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a skier assumes the risks of “the inherent nature of the sport” — the mogul, the patch of ice, the collision with another skier, the variable snow condition. A chairlift is not on that list. The California courts have expressly limited the primary assumption of risk doctrine where the danger is not inherent in the act of sliding on snow but is instead a function of the mechanical operation of the equipment. The very California appellate decisions that define the doctrine draw the line at chairlift operation. A chairlift that drops a rider is a defect, not a sport.
The resort’s “she didn’t follow the protocols” line is also legally weak. California common-carrier law puts the burden on the operator, not the rider, to ensure that the chair, the bar, the loading area, and the unloading area are designed and operated so that a reasonable rider can use them safely. A chairlift safety bar that a rider can fail to use is, in some circumstances, a defective restraint system — and the design and warning of that system is the operator’s job, not the rider’s. The defense may argue the rider was comparatively at fault for failing to lower the bar; California’s pure comparative-fault regime means the rider’s recovery is reduced, not eliminated, and a 21-year-old’s momentary mistake is measured against the operator’s full common-carrier duty of utmost care.
The Four Liability Theories We Will Plead
Every California chairlift case is built from the same four stones. We plead all four so the case cannot be knocked down by a single legal ruling.
1. Common Carrier Negligence
This is the headline claim. We allege that the operator breached the utmost-care duty by one or more specific failures: failure to maintain the chair, failure to stop the lift when a rider was visibly in distress or improperly seated, failure to train the attendant to recognize and respond to a displaced rider, failure to enforce proper loading and bar use through signage and attendant intervention, and failure to comply with the federal and state safety orders that govern tramway operation. We are not asking the jury to second-guess every ski patrol decision; we are asking the jury to find that the operator failed the standard California has set for the people it carries in its chairs.
2. Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress (NIED)
The bystander who grabbed the rider’s arms, the twin sister who held on, and the other riders on the lift and below are all potential NIED plaintiffs. Under the zone of danger rule that California has adopted from the Restatement Second of Torts § 46(2), a bystander who is present at the scene of an injury-causing event and suffers emotional distress from observing the injury to a close family member can recover, provided the bystander was within the zone of physical danger created by the negligent conduct and either suffered physical impact or was placed in immediate risk of physical harm. The sister and friend on the chair were, by definition, in the zone of danger and in immediate risk of being pulled off the chair themselves. That is a textbook NIED claim.
3. Negligent Training and Supervision
A chairlift attendant cannot do the job correctly unless trained to recognize a rider sliding out of a seat, a safety bar that has not been lowered, a chair that has stopped at an angle, or a load pattern that creates a sway. We will demand the operator’s training records, certification records, and refresher training records for every attendant and supervisor assigned to that chair on the day of the incident. The federal Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit inspects aerial tramways, and the state Passenger Tramway Safety Orders at California Code of Regulations Title 8, Chapter 4, Subchapter 6.1, plus the ANSI B77.1 national standard, set the minimum training and operational expectations. When an attendant cannot produce a current certification or the operator cannot show documented training on the exact emergency the rider experienced, the negligent-training cause of action is open.
4. Premises Liability
Premises liability is a separate and overlapping theory that captures the physical condition of the lift — the loading ramp, the unloading ramp, the chair itself, the safety bar geometry, the signage, the line-of-sight between attendant and chair, the wind conditions, and the operational decision to keep the lift running in conditions that should have stopped it. The San Bernardino Mountains are known for high-wind exposure and frequent stop-and-go operations. When an operator runs a chair through a wind event without a recorded decision to halt operations, the premises-liability claim adds pressure to the common-carrier negligence claim.
What Records the Operator Already Has — and How Fast They Disappear
A chairlift case lives or dies on the records the operator is required to create. Every one of those records has a clock on it. We send a preservation letter the day you call so the evidence does not quietly disappear.
The lift surveillance and GoPro footage. Modern chairlifts are heavily monitored. The bottom terminal, top terminal, lift line cameras, attendant stations, and the bullwheel are typically recorded. Digital loops overwrite on a 7-to-30-day cycle depending on the system’s storage capacity. We move first because this footage proves what the operator saw in real time and whether the stop sequence worked. The bystander video captured by Pierce Mayer is the equivalent of an eyewitness to the incident itself, and it must be preserved in its original format with its metadata intact.
The operator training and certification records. Cal/OSHA requires current certifications for lift operators. These records exist. The question is how long the operator keeps them and how quickly the operator produces them. We demand these records and the operator’s full training curriculum.
The lift maintenance and inspection logs. The Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit inspects each aerial tramway in California, and ANSI B77.1 sets the national maintenance and inspection cadence. The daily, weekly, monthly, and annual inspection records for the affected chair are the single most important documents in the case. They prove whether the chair, the bar, the rope, the grips, and the safety systems were inspected in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the incident, and they identify any deferred maintenance or known defects the operator was tracking.
The bystander video. Footage captured by another skier on the lift is the single most powerful piece of public evidence. It can be deleted, edited, or lost when a phone is replaced. We work with you to preserve the original device, the original file, and the metadata.
The operational logs. Wind speed, wind direction, lift speed, stop-and-go events, attendant sign-in sheets, supervisor sign-in sheets, and any safety stand-down records for the day of the incident. These exist on paper and on the lift’s digital control system.
The skipatrol response records. How long it took ski patrol to reach the rider at the top, who responded, what equipment they carried, and what was communicated to the rider before the chair reached the unloading area.
We do not wait for the operator to volunteer these records. The preservation letter goes out the day you call us, and it names every category of record above by name.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter Every Move
Once the resort’s liability insurer is on the scene, it will run a recognizable sequence of plays. We have seen every one. Knowing the play is half the battle.
Play 1: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within days of the incident, an insurance adjuster will reach out and ask to “check on” you or your family member. The call is friendly. The call is also a recorded statement designed to lock in your description of events before your lawyer has a chance to talk to you. The counter: decline the recorded statement, do not give a description of the incident, and refer the adjuster to us. We will handle the call.
Play 2: The fast check with a release attached. You may receive a quick offer of money in exchange for a release of all claims. The release will be broad and will cover future medical care, future lost wages, and future emotional distress. The counter: nothing is signed without our review. A release signed before the full extent of an injury is known is a release signed for cents on the dollar.
Play 3: The “you didn’t follow the safety protocols” letter. The operator’s first public statement is the template for the adjuster’s first letter. They will tell you that you failed to lower the bar, or failed to sit correctly, or failed to load as instructed, and that you assumed the risk. The counter: under California common-carrier law and pure comparative fault, that argument reduces but does not eliminate your recovery, and the design of the safety system is the operator’s responsibility in the first place.
Play 4: The IME doctor. The insurer will eventually request that you be examined by a doctor of their choosing. That doctor will be paid by the insurer. The counter: we prepare you for the exam, we attend where permitted, we obtain a complete copy of the report, and we obtain our own treating physicians’ opinions on the same injury. What to say and not say to an insurance adjuster is a topic we cover with every client at the start of the case.
Play 5: The “we need more time” delay. Insurers will tell you the case is being investigated when in fact they are waiting for the surveillance footage to overwrite and the witness memories to fade. The counter: we file the case before that happens.
“A carrier of persons for reward must use the utmost care and diligence to provide safe means and methods of transportation, and is responsible for any negligence by which he causes injury to a passenger.” — California Civil Code § 2100.
What the Case Is Worth
The honest value of a chairlift case at Big Bear depends on the nature and permanence of the injury. Our experience with ski lift and aerial tramway injuries in California gives us a working range, but no number can substitute for a full review of the medical record and the operator’s safety record.
- Soft-tissue strain with full recovery in 4 to 8 weeks — the medical bills, the lost wages, and a modest amount for the pain and emotional impact — typically resolves at the lower end of any chairlift settlement.
- Ligamentous strain or nerve compression that takes months to resolve with physical therapy and pain management — falls into the mid-range.
- Fracture, disc herniation, or surgical intervention — moves into a higher range depending on whether there is permanent impairment, future medical care, and lost earning capacity.
- Catastrophic spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, or death — generates the largest values because of the lifetime care plan, the lost earning capacity over a working life, and the noneconomic damages California permits without statutory cap.
- Pure NIED for a bystander — California has historically limited bystander NIED to the zone-of-danger rule, but recoveries are available and are not capped by statute in a common carrier setting.
The dossier on this incident sets a working range of approximately $15,000 at the low end to $85,000 at the high end, but that range is a starting point, not a ceiling. The actual value depends on the medical record we are about to build, the operator’s internal safety record, the bystander NIED claim for the sister and friend who held the rider, and the comparative-fault analysis. We will not quote a final number until we have the medical record, the lost-wage documentation, the operator’s incident log, and the Cal/OSHA inspection history in hand.
California is one of the few states that does not cap noneconomic damages or wrongful-death damages in this kind of case. The signature advantage of a California common-carrier chairlift case is the open damages door combined with pure comparative fault — meaning even if the jury assigns some percentage of fault to the rider, the recovery is reduced but not eliminated. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Statute of Limitations Is Real and It Is Short
Under California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1, a personal injury action must be commenced within two years from the date of injury. A wrongful death action under California Code of Civil Procedure § 366 must be commenced within two years of the death. A claim for injury to a minor is generally subject to the two-year clock from the date of injury, with tolling provisions for minors in narrow circumstances.
That two-year clock runs against you from the day the chair dropped out from under the rider, not from the day the injury was diagnosed or from the day the adjuster called. We have seen families lose the right to sue because they waited for the operator to “do the right thing” while the statute ran out. We do not let that happen. The preservation letter goes out the day you call, and the complaint is filed well within the two-year window.
“The periods of limitations, established by this section, are not affected by the death of the person injured, but the action may be commenced by the personal representative at any time within two years after the death.” — California Code of Civil Procedure § 366.
The Regulatory and Industry Standard Regime
The operator at Big Bear is not operating in a regulatory vacuum. The case is built against the operator’s compliance with a documented body of federal and state safety standards.
- California Code of Regulations Title 8, Chapter 4, Subchapter 6.1 (Passenger Tramway Safety Orders) sets the operational, design, inspection, and training standards for aerial tramways in California. The Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit is the primary investigative body for any chairlift incident in California.
- ANSI B77.1 is the national consensus standard for passenger ropeways, including requirements for emergency braking, attendant monitoring, loading and unloading procedures, and safety-bar design. ANSI B77.1 is the industry benchmark, and a deviation from it is powerful evidence of negligence.
- The U.S. Forest Service Special Use Permit that authorizes Big Bear’s operations on federal land imposes additional operational and safety conditions. The permit file is a public record that we will pull and analyze.
When an operator has fallen below the standard, the regulatory record becomes the spine of the negligence case. When an operator has been warned by a regulator and failed to act, the regulatory record becomes the spine of a punitive-damages argument. We build the case on every one of these standards.
What We Will Do in the First 72 Hours
The first three days after a chairlift incident are the difference between a case that wins and a case that cannot be proven. Here is what we do, in order, when you call.
- Send a litigation-hold and preservation letter to the operating entity, the parent company, the lift manufacturer, the lift maintenance contractor, the on-mountain ski patrol, and the Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit. The letter names every category of record identified above and demands that no surveillance footage, training record, maintenance log, or operational log be deleted, altered, or overwritten.
- Open a private investigator file to identify and interview the lift attendant on duty, the supervisor on shift, the ski patrol responders, and the bystanders who captured the incident on video.
- Request the Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit inspection history for the affected chair and for the resort as a whole.
- Request the U.S. Forest Service Special Use Permit file and any enforcement correspondence with the operator.
- Obtain the medical record from the treating hospital and the treating physician, with your written authorization, and start the medical chronology.
- Decline the recorded statement with the insurance adjuster, decline the quick settlement, and refer the adjuster to us.
- Map the corporate structure between Big Bear Mountain Resort, Alterra Mountain Company, and any subsidiary or management entity that holds the insurance.
We do this in hours, not weeks. The longer the clock runs without a preservation letter, the more evidence the operator can quietly let cycle out.
How We Get Paid
We work on contingency. The standard fee is 33 and 1/3 percent of any recovery before trial, and 40 percent if the case proceeds to trial. There is no fee unless we win. There is no charge for the consultation. We pay the case costs — the private investigator, the expert, the records retrieval, the deposition transcripts — and we are reimbursed out of the recovery at the end. How contingency fees work is something we walk every new client through in plain language on the first call. We are not the right firm for every case, and if we are not the right fit for your specific facts, we will tell you on the first call and refer you to someone who is.
Our Team
This work comes out of Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, led by Ralph Manginello. Ralph has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in 1998 and his B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin. Before law school he worked as a journalist, and he still brings that discipline to every case — go find the document, ask the hard question, and tell the client the truth. Ralph has been recognized by the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, and he is a member of the Million Dollar Trial Lawyers Association. He works in English and Spanish.
The California side of this work is led by Lupe Peña. Lupe was admitted to the Texas Bar on December 6, 2012, and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in 2012 and his B.B.A. in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio. Before joining our firm, Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm — he knows how the adjusters set reserves in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered to lock in a version of events that favors the carrier, and how the defense IME doctor is selected to discount the injury. He now uses that knowledge for injured people. Lupe is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch, born, raised, and living in Sugar Land, Texas. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Together, Ralph and Lupe work cases from intake to resolution in English or in Spanish, and they take the time to explain the playbook to every client before the insurance carrier has a chance to run it on the family.
Hablamos Espanol. The first call is free, it is confidential, and it costs you nothing.
“A carrier of persons for reward must use the utmost care and diligence to provide safe means and methods of transportation, and is responsible for any negligence by which he causes injury to a passenger.” — California Civil Code § 2100.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a California ski resort if I fell out of a chairlift?
Yes. California common-carrier law (Civil Code § 2100) holds ski lift operators to the utmost duty of care, and the primary assumption of risk doctrine does not bar a chairlift case. The fall off a moving chair is a defect, not a sport. We sue the operator, the parent company, the lift attendant, the supervisor, and the lift manufacturer under common-carrier negligence, premises liability, negligent training and supervision, and product-defect theories.
What is the statute of limitations for a chairlift injury in California?
Two years from the date of injury under California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. A wrongful death action must be filed within two years of the date of death under § 366. The clock runs from the date of injury, not from the date of diagnosis or the date the adjuster calls. We file the preservation letter the day you call and the complaint well within the two-year window.
What if I was partly at fault for the chairlift fall?
California follows pure comparative negligence under Civil Code § 1714. A finding of partial fault reduces your recovery by your percentage but does not eliminate it. We will not let the operator’s “you didn’t follow the protocols” argument become a complete bar to your case. The resort’s heightened common-carrier duty of utmost care is measured against your conduct, and a 21-year-old’s momentary mistake does not outweigh the operator’s full duty.
What evidence disappears fastest after a Big Bear chairlift incident?
Lift surveillance and GoPro footage overwrite on a 7-to-30-day cycle. Operator training and certification records can be produced late or “unavailable.” Daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance and inspection logs are durable but the operator controls access to them. Bystander video can be lost when a phone is replaced. We send a litigation-hold letter on day one that names every category of record and demands that nothing be deleted, altered, or overwritten.
How much is a Big Bear chairlift injury case worth?
The honest range depends on the nature and permanence of the injury. A soft-tissue strain that resolves in weeks falls at the lower end. A fracture, disc herniation, or surgical case falls in the mid-range. A catastrophic spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, or death moves into a much higher range driven by the lifetime care plan, the lost earning capacity, and the noneconomic damages California permits without statutory cap. Our working range on a case of this kind runs from approximately $15,000 to $85,000, but the actual value depends on the medical record, the operator’s safety record, the Cal/OSHA inspection history, and the comparative-fault analysis. We do not quote a final number until we have reviewed the medical record and the operator’s file.
Does the resort’s “you didn’t follow the safety protocols” statement end the case?
No. The resort’s first public statement is a defense move, not a legal conclusion. The primary assumption of risk doctrine is narrow in California and does not apply to chairlift operation. The common-carrier duty is the operator’s to meet, and the design of the safety system is the operator’s to design. We treat the “she didn’t follow the protocols” line as the first paragraph of the defense playbook and we answer it with the medical record, the operator’s training records, the Cal/OSHA inspection history, and the witness testimony.
Can a family member who watched the fall recover for emotional distress?
Possibly. Under the zone-of-danger rule that California has adopted, a bystander who is present at the scene of an injury-causing event and suffers emotional distress from observing injury to a close family member can recover if the bystander was within the zone of physical danger and either suffered physical impact or was placed in immediate risk of physical harm. The sister and friend who held the rider’s arms in the chair are textbook zone-of-danger plaintiffs. We evaluate the bystander NIED claim separately and pursue it where the facts support it.
What if I already talked to the insurance adjuster?
The recorded-statement call is one of the first plays the adjuster runs, and it is engineered to lock in your description of events before your lawyer has a chance to talk to you. If you have already given a recorded statement, it does not end the case, but we need to know exactly what you said so we can address it in our response. Going forward, refer the adjuster to us. We handle every communication with the insurance carrier from the day you retain us.
Who pays the case costs during a chairlift case?
We do. We advance the private investigator, the expert, the records retrieval, and the deposition transcripts. We are reimbursed out of the recovery at the end. The contingency-fee structure means the client owes nothing upfront and owes nothing at all if we do not win.
How long does a Big Bear chairlift case take to resolve?
It depends on the medical record and the operator’s willingness to settle. A soft-tissue case with full recovery can resolve in 4 to 8 months once the medical record is complete. A case involving surgery or permanent impairment typically takes 12 to 24 months to resolve. A wrongful death case is generally 18 to 36 months. We move as fast as the medical record and the discovery schedule allow, and we do not settle for a number that does not reflect the full value of the case.
Is Big Bear Mountain Resort a different entity than Snow Summit or Bear Mountain?
Big Bear Mountain Resort is the operating brand for the combined Snow Summit and Bear Mountain ski areas in the San Bernardino Mountains. The owner and operator is Big Bear Mountain Resort, with the broader parent platform Alterra Mountain Company behind it. The operating entity, the parent company, the lift attendant, the supervisor, and the lift manufacturer are all potential defendants. We name the right ones on day one.
What is the role of Cal/OSHA and the Passenger Tramway Safety Orders in a chairlift case?
California Code of Regulations Title 8, Chapter 4, Subchapter 6.1 (Passenger Tramway Safety Orders) sets the operational, design, inspection, and training standards for aerial tramways in California. The Cal/OSHA Elevating Devices Unit is the primary investigative body for any chairlift incident in California. The ANSI B77.1 national standard sets the industry benchmark for passenger ropeways. When an operator falls below those standards, the regulatory record becomes the spine of the negligence case and, in the most serious cases, the spine of a punitive-damages argument.
Why does California treat a chairlift differently from a regular ski slope?
A skier on a slope can choose direction, speed, and line, and the sport’s inherent risks flow from that freedom. A skier in a chairlift cannot. The passenger is completely at the mercy of the equipment, the attendant, and the operator. California responds to that helplessness by holding the operator to the heightened common-carrier duty of utmost care and by refusing to extend the primary assumption of risk doctrine to mechanical operation of the lift.
What happens at the free consultation?
We sit down with you, in English or in Spanish, and we listen. We take the facts of the incident, the medical history, the lost wages, and the questions you have. We tell you honestly whether the operator has exposure, what records we need to pull, what the working value of the case looks like at this stage, and how the contingency-fee structure works. If we are not the right fit for your case, we tell you on that first call. The consultation is free, confidential, and costs you nothing.
“Pure comparative negligence is the law in California. A plaintiff’s damages are reduced in proportion to the plaintiff’s own fault, but recovery is not barred by any percentage of plaintiff’s fault.” — California Civil Code § 1714.
Take the First Step — Today
If you or a family member was injured on a chairlift at Big Bear Mountain Resort, the call you make today protects the case you have tomorrow. The surveillance footage, the operator’s training records, the Cal/OSHA inspection history, the bystander video, and the maintenance logs are all on clocks. We freeze them on day one. We do not charge for the consultation, we do not charge for the preservation letter, and we do not get paid unless we win.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Hablamos Espanol. The first call is free and confidential. We will tell you on that call what we can do for your family, and if we are not the right fit, we will tell you that too. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
