One of the primo spots to MUni in Oklahoma is Bluff Creek (I marked it on our map), and IMHO its the best. Now some fellow who had the misfortune of an accident there is taking the MTB club that maintains the trail to court for his medical expenses! Yes, I’m sorry he got hurt (but that is why I have medical insurance), but in no way do I believe its the fault of the fine members of the Oklahoma EarthBike Fellowship who do an excellent job maintaining this high traffic trail. Here is the link to the story…
http://www.channeloklahoma.com/news/6682552/detail.html
You can do me a favor and e-mail your support (or if you disagree your blame) at the contact page of okearthbike dot com to let those members know that another sport appreciates their efforts, for if this proves to be too much for them and they give up this trail, I’ll become a full time Coker rider…
Everywhere? Excellent! Next time I sprain my ankle on an uneven piece of sidewalk, I’m suing the city! 
The bridge in question is in front of a short but steep uphill (perfect for a MUni!), and many bikers take too much speed over the bridge in effort to minimize downshifting and cranking. I don’t know the hurt riders experience, but that scenario is a possibilty for the accident. Personally I have rode that trail many times on both a MTB and Muni with never an accident on the old bridge. I will say the new bridge now allows me to build more speed on the MUni so the uphill is only nearly impossible - or in other words - perfect!
The guy probably sucks. I don’t think anyone that was good, or really enjoyed MTB would sue over that.
Information provided by the article, and the accompanying video, provide very limited information. Not enough to form much of an opinion. Though I get the general sense that Jerry Reese and his lawyer are being selfish bastards, they may have somewhat of a case.
The question is whether man-made “aids” on a mountain bike trail should always be perfect. Essentially that is what this suit is going to claim. A road bridge over a local creek, which may cost a million dollars, can be expected to be reasonably safe at all times. It has a budgeted system and schedule of inspections to keep it that way. The alternative on a bike trail that may have been paid for by a local club, is to leave out any man-made aids, and perhaps not do any “official” trailwork, to avoid lawsuits.
Hence the selfish bastard part. Jerry just wants help with his medical bills. Fine. But is it really someone else’s fault if a bridge is imperfect? Those things aren’t built to last forever, and I don’t think there should be any expectation that they will. They should not be assumed to be any less “rugged” than the trail they are a part of.
Anyone who has ridden across man-made bridges on trails knows the ends of the bridges are often sketchy, as they are points of erosion and/or wear & tear. They usually are the site of big bumps.
Jerry alludes that he “thinks” a broken board in the bridge caused his crash, but apparently he blacked out and can’t remember the incident. So unless this can be proven, that his crash was directly a result of him hitting a broken section of bridge, the case is weakened.
My local mountain bike group, FATRAC (www. fatrac.org), spends thousands of hours of volunteer trailwork a year on the local trails. They also do advocacy work to get more trails open for legal riding. I have helped with some of this. These trails, though made of natural features, are all man-made. And they have to be man-maintained to keep from eroding or otherwise turning into muddy, washed-away messes. I shudder to think that a greedy lawyer and his client in Oklahoma will ruin this for everyone else. What if entire trails are deemed too risky to build or maintain? THAT is what this case is potentially about.
Jerry, we all feel real bad about your injuries. But a wooden bridge on a mountain bike trail should not be considered an automatically “safe” section of an otherwise potentially hazardous ride. You chose to ride. You crashed. Sounds like you landed on your head or back. That sucks. So should it suck for everyone else if you have to pay your own medical bills?
One of my riding buddies is a devoted motorcross racer, and he brings up a valid point. No racer would ever hit a course full speed the first lap until he is sure the track is okay. This MTB trail is just shy of 4 miles long, and you can either ask another rider in the parking lot about the trail conditions, take a warm-up lap, or simply ride only as fast as your braking distance will allow. But as a person who only would go to a public pool to use the diving board and has seen the number of boards diminish, I will watch this case closely in fear the number of places that will allow me to ride will diminish as well…
[SIGLINE ALERT] WhoopWhoopWhoop[/SIGLINEALERT]
Has anyone sent this tory to Randy Cunningham yet?
I think it’s ridiculous to expect to be able to claim against the club for injuries. Surely anybody who rides this sort of trail knows it’s a fairly dangerous activity. We try to reduce the risk and severity of injury by wearing helmets, gloves, pads etc, and by riding within our ability, but in order to have fun we’re going to be pushing our limits. Crashes happen - it’s inevitable. We choose to do a potentially hazardous sport and put ourselves at risk. Why should we blame anybody but ourselves when something goes wrong?
Of course it’s a different matter if the crash is caused maliciously, by sabotage or something (like wires tied between trees or purposely weakened bridges).
Rob
I have only told or sent the story to people I believe would have empathy with the MTB club in fear I might otherwise help the injured rider’s case. Hopefully when it is over I can share the good news that trail access has not compromised, and adventure still lives…
I imagine the lawyer will try to build a case of negligence on the part of the bridgebuilders. Such a topic may need to delve into whether there are any standards of what should be reasonably expected for a bridge on a MTB trail. Unfortunately the potential results of this case are far larger than one little bridge on one little trail.
What would constitute negligence? To what standards should a bicycle bridge be built? How long should it be expected to last?
And how did one allegedly broken board, which allegedly caused the crash, compare with the average rideability of the rest of the trail?
I know the answer. It’s simple. Just pave the trail and make sure it’s not too hilly. Then it will be safe for everyone to ride on! 
Then it’d be like mountain wheelchairing.
You’d think, but then again it would have to be a soft material - with bumpers
This is part of the problem. The plaintiff is saying he needs to be coddled. I’m sure he thinks of it differently, but hey, you can have problems with the man-made parts of a trail as well. If you’re riding a rough trail of imperfect obstacles, the “logic” of expecting the man-made stuff to be perfectly safe is a little weak.
The bridge was presumably put there to coddle riders to some extent, and possibly to prevent accidents for people crossing the stream. It might also have been added as an anti-erosion measure, to prevent the stream being messed up by too many bikes going through. Let’s just assume the bridge is there because the water might be deep, and crossing the streambed might be dangerous. The MTB club’s option might then be to not build any.
But the further problem is, as I mentioned earlier, MTB trails are man-made. And they have to be maintained to stay safely and enjoyably rideable. They type of maintenance probably depends on the environment of the area. For my local trails, they have to be built to discourage erosion, and repaired regularly from the erosion that takes place from above, or to the man-made parts. Without this maintenance, the trail becomes either unrideable, or just extremely dangerous.
Mr. Man just wants his medical bills paid. I don’t think he intentionally wants to prevent the local mountain bike club from building and maintaining trails, or to make his local trails more dangerous to ride on due to his selfishness.
“Hey! I crashed on your bridge and now I’m injured!”
“Sorry, we’ll fix tthe bridge right away.”
“Who’s going to pay for my medical bills?”
“Uh, we just built the bridge, ostensibly to make your ride easier. We didn’t make you crash.”
“Yes you did.”
“The ten riders before you and the ten riders after you seem to have dealt with a broken board in a bridge without incident. What makes you special?”
“Uh, my lawyer?”
Million Dollar Wipeout
A similar event occured in Ontario.
A mountain biker, who happens to be a personal injury lawyer, fell of his bike into a “hole in the ground, the depth, size and location of which constituted an unusual danger.” He suffered a fractured vertabra.
This mountain biking lawyer and his wife(suing for loss of guidance, care and companionship caused by the accident) are/were seeking $1,150,000 in damages. (even with free healthcare!)
Unfortunately I don’t know what the result was or how it affected other trails and associations.
I couln’t find any current information on the net.
Every rider should know the risks of riding, and take responsibility for what occurs because of their choice to ride. Hopefully the jury or judges responsible for these cases have enough common sense to reconise this.
I’m not so sure. I don’t like what this guy is doing and I sincerely hope it doesn’t lead to problems for other recreational users of that area but I do think we might be a tad harsh on the poor sod.
Isn’t he just a guy who’s caught a bit short by major medical bills having a roll of the dice in a litigious society, hoping to get a new b*ke and a playstation2 out of the deal?
And why was the rider not paying attention? It sounds like it wasn’t that the bridge gave way unexpectedly - it says in the article something like “on one lap he noticed a broken blank in the bridge… that caused him to crash”. If he noticed the broken plank and still couldn’t avoid the crash than he would presumably have done the same thing on a rock or root. Could you blame the club for letting you ride a trail with rocks and roots on it? I can see that it could be said that the bridge is directly man-made, so there could be somebody directly to blame, but I would say the whole trail is set by people - even if they only suggested the route. It sounds a bit like going skiing and complaining you fell over because the piste was slippery.
Rob
Yes he is, but at whose expense? The stuff that I read did not indicate his insurance situation, but it seems reasonable to guess that he is not fully covered. Unfortunately this is all too common over here, and hard to avoid if your job doesn’t include health coverage.
So he’s having a roll of the dice, but the outcome could potentially ruin the local MTB club, or have worse consequences as a precedent for future cases nationwide.
At first I was thinking maybe “coddled” is a little harsh. But not if you think of the opposite. He thinks he crashed because of something the local MTB club did. I don’t agree. I think he is responsible to pay attention to the trail, man-made obstacles or not, and know when to dismount and walk if there are problems ahead.
I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here. Your society didn’t suddenly wake up one morning and found it could sue for the slightest thing and have a realistic chance of getting a major settlement. That was a process that took quite a while. And all the while your representatives let it go, not constantly petitioned by their constituents to keep some sense of reality and indeed ‘justice’ in the process.
This is reapage.
Umm, isn’t mountain biking inherently dangerous? My mom always told me not to run on trails as I might trip and hurt myself. But to me, it was worth the risk. I broke both a leg and a collarbone in high school (the same year) playing soccer. It’s still my favorite sport. I got a hernia from unicycling. I’m still planning on going to Moab.
I really wish there were some way to work a stupidity clause into the law system. If you’re doing something stupid like mountain biking or offroad unicycling and you injure yourself, you must be required to take responsibility for yourself. The only exception would be if someone deliberately comes up to you and pushes you off the trail over a cliff or something.