im surprised i didnt find anything on here about this, maybe i didnt look hard enough though.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=122890587737245
Maribeth Blonski seeks $2.9 MILLION in compensatory damages due to her own negligence on Metropolitan District property, arguing that the owner of the company be held LIABLE for her injury sustained during a "mountain biking" incident on the day of May 16th, 2002.
"It doesn't look good for bicycling,'' MDC lawyer R. Bartley Halloran said this week.
"Up until this most recent decision, the MDC had considered that the immunity that applies to municipalities also applies to us. The problem is that we have about 80 miles of roadways. To get that up to a level of where you wouldn't have these types of claims is going to be very likely impossible."
"You have to consider whether you are going to close it totally or close it just to bikers and roller bladers."
One of Blonski's lawyers, Joel Faxon, told me that the MDC has "tens of millions of dollars in insurance."
That is the problem here folks who think there is an always-full trough to feed at. Without our it's-got-to-be-somebody-else's-fault culture, the law firm of Stratton Faxon wouldn't exist.And Faxon, I suppose, has a point when he tells me that "there is a way you set up a bike path. There are rules and regulations and standards."
"The concept that they are going to close the place down or have to prohibit public use seems to me likely an effort to pander to the legislature to obtain immunity," he said.
I certainly hope this persuades the General Assembly to pass some sort of special immunity for the MDC. But there's another, larger point increasingly lost these days: personal responsibility.
"Mountain biking by definition does not occur on smooth and even garden paths without obstructions such as trees, ravines, boulders, cliffs, gates and fences,'' the MDC argued in court papers. "Mountain biking occurs on a variety of terrains, which the plaintiff well knew before she chose to ride her mountain bike with her head down in the wrong direction and, ultimately, into a bright yellow pipe gate."
Public hearings on whether to close the reservoir to bicycles will be announced soon.
If you are a cyclist, you might want to get out to the reservoir this weekend. There might not be much time left for biking at the reservoir.
