Oregon ski mountains, recreational companies and nonprofits, are on the verge of an operational crisis involving the difficulty of getting, and retaining, affordable liability insurance — or any at all.
As of May 29, ski resorts including Mt. Hood Meadows, Timberline and Willamette Pass became uninsured, or stand to become so by sometime this summer unless they can find another insurer. They were previously covered by Safehold Special Risk, one of only two insurance companies in the country that offer coverage to ski areas. Not finding replacement coverage puts these ski areas’ 2025-2026 operations in jeopardy.
But a new bill, fresh out of an Oregon Senate committee, landed on the Senate president’s desk on June 18. If signed, SB 1196 will be scheduled to go back and forth between the senate and house floors as lawmakers mull over whether to make it law.
A similar bill introduced in March, HB 3140, died in a House work committee. Authors of the SB 1196 have carried over much of the same language, but they specified that signing a parental liability waiver would not negate a plaintiff’s claim of negligence in a lawsuit, for example.
And time is ticking in Salem — state lawmakers’ session ends June 29. A special day session for Bill 1196 could happen, but it would be exceptional. The bill may not get floor time until February. Or, like HB 3140, it may languish in committee.
“This bill would extinguish the legal rights of Oregonians in all sorts of circumstances. It’s basically taking away people’s rights, so insurance companies might decide to change their opinion of Oregon and come back into the marketplace. But there’s no guarantee that that will happen.” — Joe Piucci, Oregon trial lawyer
SB 1196 is the product of Protect Oregon Recreation — a wide coalition of Oregon ski resort owners and non-ski-related outdoor recreation businesses, nonprofits and event organizers. Central Oregon supporters of the bill included the Bend Chamber of Commerce, Oregon Adaptive Sports, Ladies All Ride and the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, which puts on dozens of bike races in Central Oregon and throughout the state.
And SB 1196 has legs — 10 lawmakers have signed bipartisan support. Bill opponents include trial lawyers associated with the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, and Rep. Jason Kropf, (D-54). Kropf set up a work group with trial lawyer Joe Piucci to find a way to make the bill address insurance affordability and availability. Piucci told the Source that SB 1196, as presently written, is too interested in placating insurance company interests at the expense of Oregonians’ rights when it comes to liability.
“This bill would extinguish the legal rights of Oregonians in all sorts of circumstances,” Piucci said. “It’s basically taking away people’s rights so insurance companies might decide to change their opinion of Oregon and come back into the marketplace. But there’s no guarantee that that will happen.”
Kropf issued a statement shortly before press time that echoes Piucci’s view: “We have seen challenges and rising costs in multiple areas involving accessing adequate insurance, including fire insurance,” Kropf wrote in an email. “I am committed to working with other legislators and stakeholders on this issue and broader concerns involving accessing adequate insurance.”
Skiing past the brink?
The current liability insurance situation, which many call a crisis, was set into motion on May 29. That’s when Safehold Special Risk, one of two insurance carriers servicing Oregon ski resorts, informed Mt. Hood Meadows management in a letter that the insurance provider was withdrawing itself from the Oregon marketplace. William Curtis, Safehold’s resort and recreation program manager, explained his company’s decision to withdraw from all Oregon clients. Curtis wrote that their decision to leave Oregon owes to the 2014 precedent the Oregon Supreme Court set in the case Bagley v. Mt. Bachelor.
In 2006, Myles Bagley, a snowboarder, suffered a serious injury after he hit a jump he alleged was defective in the Mt. Bachelor terrain park, rendering him paraplegic. Initially, a trial court threw out the lawsuit because Bagley had signed the resort’s mandatory liability waiver. Or, more specifically, Bagley’s father had signed the parental liability waiver for his son, who was 17 at the signing at 18 on the date of the injury. Bagley’s attorneys appealed the decision on the grounds that the dynamic between a corporation and a customer is imbalanced; the resort guest has no choice but to sign the liability waiver to use the ski resort’s facilities. Bagley and Mt. Bachelor settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
““One contributor [to rising premiums] is that, without the ability to enforce voluntary liability waivers, every case either must go through an expensive trial or be settled without any opportunity for a judge to dismiss the case prior to trial. That increases defense costs and settlements, and thus losses, and it has also increased the number of cases filed in Oregon.” —Tim Hendrikson, MountainGuard, Senior Vice President.
According to a legal summary of the Bagley v. Mt. Bachelor case by Willamette University Law School, “a liability release is unconscionable and unenforceable if both its procedural and substantive elements are so against public policy that they protect negligent premises management and allocate all negligent damages upon a paying customer with no bargaining power.”
What that means in plain language is that the Oregon Supreme Court said that signing a waiver doesn’t protect resort owners, for example, from negligence, such as a faulty ski chair cable that might snap or a jump that is poorly maintained.
This 2014 ruling grants recreationists far greater protections and legal recourse when they suffer a catastrophic injury on the policyholder’s facilities. Oregon is presently the only western state that does not enforce liability waivers — a fact that SafeHold cited for its retreat from Oregon.
The effects of the ruling have been consequential. Plaintiffs in civil suits have much more power in recouping damages from defendant parties. In 2022, a mountain biker was awarded $10.5 million in a civil suit against Mt. Hood Skibowl, when a poorly maintained mountain bike trail resulted in a spinal injury.
Rising premiums mean higher operating costs — and ski passes
The insurance crunch in Oregon tracks with a general hike across the country. Homeowner insurance premiums, for example, climbed 24% in the past three years — twice the rate of inflation, according to a recent report published by the Consumer Federation of America.
Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort General Manager and President John Merriman told the Source in an email that the company, owned by Powdr Corporation, cobbles insurance coverage from a variety of carriers, while smaller resorts face a significantly more difficult time securing insurance coverage. While MountainGuard covers liability on the ski slopes and lifts, other carriers protect Mt. Bachelor in other aspects.
“We fear a few significant claims could result in a broader withdrawal of insurance carriers from outdoor recreation in Oregon,” said Merriman, adding that Mt. Bachelor supports SB 1196. “They would have a significant detrimental impact on the businesses and communities that benefit and rely on outdoor recreation in Oregon and on the health of Oregonians. We hope to bring Oregon in line with every other Western state.”
That’s exactly the legal change that Safehold would require to reenter the state — protections like those that were in place from 1979 until the 2014 Bagley case.
Tim Hendrikson, a senior vice president and program manager at MoutainGuard, also testified in support of both bills. Hendrikson told the Source via email that his company, which has offered coverage to ski resorts since 1962, plans to continue to support its ski industry clients in Oregon. That said, Hendrikson said that doesn’t mean the company can fill the void left by Safehold. Each new client is considered on a case-by-case basis.
“We do believe the ski area operators in Oregon are managed and operated to the current industry standards and do an exceptional job of operating with many inherent risks,” he said.
Hendrickson said insurance premiums in Oregon have risen because the state hasn’t enforced liability waivers since 2014. Without that protection for recreational operators, Hendrickson said losses will increase. That drives insurance companies to raise premiums — or withdraw from the state. “We’ve been able to continue to insure in Oregon with caution and at higher insurance rates.
“One contributor [to rising premiums] is that, without the ability to enforce voluntary liability waivers, every case either must go through an expensive trial or be settled without any opportunity for a judge to dismiss the case prior to trial,” Hendrickson said. “That increases defense costs and settlements, and thus losses, and it has also increase the number of cases filed in Oregon.”
Jordan Elliott, the president of the Pacific Northwest Ski Areas Association and a key founder of Protect Oregon Recreation, is onboard with liability waiver re-enforcement. He said the widespread reliance of waivers is obvious by a cursory glance at the Oregon Secretary of State’s business registry.
“If you search for any business with the word ‘tour’ in its name, or ‘guide’ you will pull up thousands of entries,” Elliott told the Source; he’s right. “That goes for ‘fitness’ and ‘gym’ facilities. How many of those are important? How many rock climbing walls? How many mountain bike operations? These are all businesses that rely on waivers.”
Every time a cyclist enters a race put on by the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association, they’ve signed a liability waiver. OBRA, a nonprofit which offers pooled low-cost liability insurance to race promoters, isn’t immediately affected by Safehold’s retreat from Oregon’s outdoor recreation industry. Executive Director Chuck Kenlan said his organization’s premiums have remained fairly stable over the last decade, although OBRA has lost insurance twice in the past four years. Each year’s premium cost is based on the unique individual participants from the previous year, along with OBRA’s claim history, of which it counts three in 35 years. Kenlan renews OBRA’s insurance policy for the upcoming year each November — a particularly stressful time until he’s granted the next season’s coverage.
“It’s like, ‘OK. Now we can have bike races for another year,'” he said.
If OBRA wasn’t able to offer pooled liability insurance, as it does for 200 bike races throughout Oregon and other states through its sister organization North American Bicycle Racing Assocation, Kenlan estimates that about half of races would fall off the race calendar.
“It’d just be too difficult for race promoters to find insurance on their own,” Kenlan said.
Tim Hendrickson, at MoutainGuard, says if a bill like SB 1196 isn’t passed, leveling the liability playing field, his company is very concerned about Oregon’s recreation future.
“A provider of recreation should have the ability to inform a guest of the risk of the recreation and have protections against those risks with the use of a waiver,” he said.
[Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of sponsors of Senate Bill 1196; the bill has 10 sponsors, not 33. We regret the error; Clarification: we also revised this story to reflect that in Bagley v. Mt. Bachelor, the plaintiff’s claim that the ski jump was neglected was not proven in court.]
—This story is powered by the Lay It Out Foundation, the nonprofit with a mission of promoting deep reporting and investigative journalism in Central Oregon. Learn more and be part of this important work by visiting layitoutfoundation.org. If you’re interested in syndicating Lay It Out Foundation content or purchasing an article for use, you can do so through the website.
This article appears in Source Weekly June 26, 2025.
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Just wondering why you did not talk to more than one person who opposes this Bill. Well rounded factual reporting is key to all important issues
Raise your hand if you think passage of SB 1196 will lead to lower lift ticket prices.
Anyone? Bueller?