Is a gym waiver lawsuit proof?

Question for any lawyers on the site. I just had to sign a new waiver at my climbing gym and it got me thinking. The waiver says I give up any rights to sue but is that actually the case? I mean I get that if I fall off a bouldering route and sustain a minor ankle injury, the waiver would probably protect the gym. But what if something fails due to negligence by the gym? 

But what if I am climbing and being belayed by a gym employee who is not paying attention and leaves too much slack in the rope. And I take a fall and anchor fails because it wasn't installed correctly. If this causes me injury, could I still sue? I am really just curious.

No waiver or contract can protect a company from gross negligence. 

Pete G.wrote:

Question for any lawyers on the site. I just had to sign a new waiver at my climbing gym and it got me thinking. The waiver says I give up any rights to sue but is that actually the case? 

No.   You can always sue.  

However, you have to prove your case to win.

John Byrneswrote:

However, you have to prove your case to win.

If normally intelligent people were involved, this might be the case, but IMO personal injury is a gong show of liberal arts majors in a room with every financial incentive to turn the affair into the most overblown massively confukulated shitshow possible - where absolutely anything can and does happen.

Waivers primarily exist to make people think about personal responsibility and to consider that they shouldn't sue if they get hurt. But to a jury in a personal injury trial they're not going to mean anything at all.

I've seen medical malpractice lawsuits where a person signed an informed consent warning of that EXACT possible complication and, yet, they were suing because they claimed that the doctor hadn't explained to them precisely what "paralysis" or "brain damage" meant. Don't think it'd be any different in the case of a climbing gym negligence lawsuit.

SinRopa's answers are right on the money.

First of all: What country are you in? And then what state/province are you in?

Man, I hate waivers. Or the society that makes them necessary. Imagine a world where people took responsibility for their own actions and you couldn't attempt to sign or sue away the consequences of your own greed or stupidity. And maybe on top of that, a world where breaking a leg didn't potentially result in financial ruin. Yeah, totally unreasonable I know....

If your case is good enough the waiver doesn’t matter. Most injury lawyers are looking for @ 100k in losses to take a case though. 

Raz Bobwrote:

Man, I hate waivers. Or the society that makes them necessary. Imagine a world where people took responsibility for their own actions and you couldn't attempt to sign or sue away the consequences of your own greed or stupidity. And maybe on top of that, a world where breaking a leg didn't potentially result in financial ruin. Yeah, totally unreasonable I know....

I agree, join us in Europe ;)

As a side note, a Just society would have provisions for lawyers that file frivolous suits that get tossed out to be taken out behind the paint shed and given a Tiger Balm enema 

Back when Rock Springs, Wyoming was first founded, there was only one lawyer in town. For years the poor guy lived in poverty, relying on the charity of the local ranchers to survive. 

But then he recruited another young lawyer from NYC to move out there too. Within 5 years they were the 2 richest men in the county.

Claudine Longetwrote:

Back when Rock Springs, Wyoming was first founded, there was only one lawyer in town. For years the poor guy lived in poverty, relying on the charity of the local ranchers to survive. 

But then he recruited another young lawyer from NYC to move out there too. Within 5 years they were the 2 richest men in the county.

Source?

Khoiwrote:

Source?

An old tale passed down for generations 

Claudine Longetwrote:

An old tale passed down for generations 

It reeks of bullshit.

Especially the part about them being the 2 richest men in the country.

Khoiwrote:

It reeks of bullshit.

Especially the part about them being the 2 richest men in the country.

Of course it reeks. Most of what comes out of Zippy reeks. Have you ever read his posts before? Brother Numsie? Mike Lane?

Scooby Doo wrote:

.....

Remember we live in the most highly litigious society EVER.

....

Oh, do you live in Germany? Or maybe Sweden? Or Israel or Austria?

Because all of those have have more lawsuits per capita than the United States.

SinRopa wrote:

With regard to the above scenario, it's a bit apples to oranges as there's a difference between malpractice and negligence.  A valid medical malpractice lawsuit would mean a medical provider willfully didn’t perform a proper standard of care.  This isn't something that an informed consent warning would cover (i.e., you can't legally waive your rights to a proper standard of care).  If the facts are as cut and dry as they're stated (plaintiff signs an informed consent form but later claims a doc didn't precisely explain what paralysis was, but there's no evidence that the doc violated accepted medical standards), a court would likely dismiss that claim before trial.  There's probably more to that story.  

Here's the flaw to your logic, SinRopa. Standard of Care is not a clearly-defined concept when you start getting into esoteric or complicated life-saving medical therapies. Just for example, I once helped defend a case where one of the most well respected surgeons and one of the most well-respected hospitals in the USA performed a life-saving brain surgery that, low and behold, left the patient with some impairment of their speech. The patient was a highly compensated venture capitalist who claimed that the speech impairment made it impossible to do their job any more. The informed consent clearly mentioned the possibility of brain damage, paralysis, etc. But didn't specifically mention "speech impairment." And, bear in mind, the plaintiff would have DIED without surgery eventually, which would have been much worse than a little difficulty pronouncing words.

In any reasonable world that case should have been tossed in motion for summary judgement. But it wasn't. It went to trial and, in the end, a jury was more sympathetic to the life-saving doctor than the gold-digging VC. But that was probably a million dollars in defense costs later. 

I see dozens of cases like that. And you are correct, though, that "standard of care" is almost always what it comes down to a jury deciding, not whether someone signed a release or not. 

Khoiwrote:

It reeks of bullshit.

Especially the part about them being the 2 richest men in the country.

County. Maybe I misspelled.

I'm 60 and a 4th gen Colorado native with Wyoming roots. It was once a common tale.

Scooby Doo wrote:

^^

Spare me your semantic Boulder BS regarding the meaning of society. Thanks.

Look it up since you’re still in a fine if crowded University town.

You are just another Eeyore.

I'll bite - is your argument that Germany, Sweden, Israel, and Austria _aren't_ societies?

I think the 'two lawyers' anecdote is from Mark Twain