On January 3, 2016, a snowboarder at Spirit Mountain outside Duluth hit a hillock on an “easiest” run, went airborne, and spun a backside 180. Halfway through the trick his back faced downhill. He couldn’t see what was below him. What was below him was a ski instructor, teaching a six-year-old in an area marked “slow skiing area.” He landed on her. She lost consciousness and was seriously hurt. Soderberg v. Anderson, 922 N.W.2d 200, 202 (Minn. 2019).
The district court threw her case out. The theory was implied primary assumption of risk, the old idea that if you choose a dangerous activity, you’ve accepted its dangers and nobody owes you care against them. Case over.
The Minnesota Supreme Court said no, and on the same day it said no to a bar that tried the same argument. Soderberg and Henson v. Uptown Drink, LLC, 922 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 2019), both came down January 23, 2019. Together they tell you how small “you knew the risk” has gotten in Minnesota. It still beats you if a foul ball hits you in the stands. It doesn’t beat you if another skier wipes you out.
Two doctrines that share one name
Minnesota sorted this out in December 1971, in a case about teenagers drag racing home from a Bridgeman’s in Bloomington after a school play at Edina High. Sixteen-year-old Mary Springrose stayed in the car after the early racing showed her the driver’s disposition to drive dangerously, the car overturned during a later race, and the jury found she’d assumed the risk. Springrose v. Willmore, 292 Minn. 23, 26–27, 192 N.W.2d 826 (1971).
The supreme court split the doctrine in two. One kind isn’t a defense at all:
Primary assumption of risk, express or implied, relates to the initial issue of whether a defendant was negligent at all — that is, whether the defendant had any duty to protect the plaintiff from a risk of harm.
— Springrose, 292 Minn. at 24
That’s the one that ends cases, because no duty means no negligence. And the court said right then that “[t]he classes of cases involving an implied primary assumption of risk are not many”. Id.
The other kind, secondary assumption of risk, is what Mary Springrose did: choosing to stay in a car with a reckless driver. The court said it “must, in our view, be recast as an aspect of contributory negligence, meaning that the plaintiff’s assumption of risk must be not only voluntary but, under all the circumstances, unreasonable.” Id. And then it “must be apportioned under our comparative negligence statute”. Id. at 24–25. Today’s statute says the same thing in its own words: “fault” includes “unreasonable assumption of risk not constituting an express consent or primary assumption of risk”. Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1a. I walked through how a fault percentage actually shrinks a verdict at /news/minnesota-comparative-fault-collateral-source/.
So “you knew the risk” now means one of two very different things. Either it’s a percentage on a verdict form, or it’s the end of the case. Almost everything is the percentage.
What’s on the short list
Primary assumption of risk applies, in the supreme court’s words, “only where parties have voluntarily entered a relationship in which plaintiff assumes well-known, incidental risks.” Wagner v. Thomas J. Obert Enters., 396 N.W.2d 223, 226 (Minn. 1986) (quoting Olson v. Hansen, 299 Minn. 39, 216 N.W.2d 124, 127 (1974)). In practice that has meant a handful of sports, and Soderberg recounts them: the flying baseball cases going back to 1913, flying golf balls, flying hockey pucks, collisions on an ice rink, falls on a roller rink. 922 N.W.2d at 203–04. Daly v. McFarland lists one more, patrons at the track during a sanctioned auto race. 812 N.W.2d 113, 120 (Minn. 2012).
The ballpark rule is the oldest and the hardest. A ballpark owes its spectators “only a limited duty, which is to offer the spectators a choice between screened-in seats and seats without protective netting.” Alwin v. St. Paul Saints Baseball Club, Inc., 672 N.W.2d 570, 572 (Minn. Ct. App. 2003). In Alwin, a fan at Midway Stadium walked down from the bleachers to the restroom in the seventh or eighth inning and was hit in the mouth by a foul ball on the way back, near the concession stand. He wasn’t watching the game. He couldn’t see the batter. He lost a tooth. Id. at 571. He lost the case, too: in the stands or by the concession stand, he was a spectator, and he “primarily assumes the risk inherent to the game, which includes being hit by a foul ball.” Id. at 573. Asked to change the rule, the court declined: “Such modification of the law is for the legislature.” Id. at 574.
Golf is the same. Mary Grisim went to a charity pro-am at Southview Country Club, found the bleachers behind the 18th green packed, and sat under a tree to the left of the green. An amateur’s tee shot hooked left and hit her in the left eye, and the eye had to be removed. Grisim v. TapeMark Charity Pro-Am Golf Tournament, 415 N.W.2d 874, 875 (Minn. 1987). The supreme court held her claim against the golfer was barred. The only duty owed her “was to provide her with a reasonable opportunity to view the participants from a safe area”, and the golfer “had no control over the arrangements for spectators and therefore breached no duty to Grisim.” Id. That one is brutal, and Soderberg left it standing.
Can you sue another skier in Minnesota?
Yes, for negligence. The Court of Appeals had put skier collisions on the list in 2007. Soderberg took them back off: “the court of appeals’ decision in Peterson, 733 N.W.2d 790, holding that implied primary assumption of risk applies to collisions between skiers, is overruled.” 922 N.W.2d at 206 n.6.
The court gave three reasons. The record didn’t show “that injurious collisions between skiers are so frequent and damaging that they must be considered inherent in the sport”, and the ski industry’s own responsibility code, which Spirit Mountain had adopted, says common sense and awareness can reduce the risks. Id. at 205. The doctrine “is not favored, and should be limited rather than extended”, a line the court took from a 1930 opinion and meant. Id. (quoting Suess v. Arrowhead Steel Prods. Co., 180 Minn. 21, 230 N.W. 125, 126 (1930)). And there was no evidence that holding careless skiers liable would chill anyone’s skiing. “Logically, it seems just as likely that the prospect of an absolute bar to recovery could deter the participation of prospective victims of negligent patrons.” Id. at 206.
The court was asked to abolish the doctrine outright and wouldn’t. It left the old categories standing, “our precedent regarding flying sports objects and slippery rinks”, and said “we still see a role—limited as it may be—for this common-law doctrine in cases involving the sports to which it has been applied.” Id. at 205–06.
So a skier who hits you on the hill owed you reasonable care, and his carelessness gets judged like anybody else’s. Your own carelessness gets a percentage. Neither side gets a no-duty card.
Bars aren’t a contact sport. Neither are snowmobiles.
Henson came from a Minneapolis bar. An off-duty employee jumped in to help the manager remove an aggressive, drunk patron; at the front door the three of them tripped and fell onto the sidewalk, and he hit his head and died six days later. The district court called it assumed risk. The supreme court refused to extend the doctrine “to foreclose claims arising out of the operation and patronage of bars”, and put it about as plainly as a court can: “The operation and patronage of bars is not—and should not be—a contact sport.” Henson, 922 N.W.2d at 188–89, 190–91. I covered what a bar does owe its customers at /news/minnesota-negligent-security-premises/.
Snowmobiling never made the list either. In 1974 the court said “[a] snowmobile, carefully operated, is no more hazardous than an automobile, train, or taxi”, and in 2012 it refused to overrule that, holding the doctrine doesn’t preclude a claim that a rider owed “a duty of reasonable care in the operation of his snowmobile.” Daly, 812 N.W.2d at 120 (quoting Olson, 299 Minn. at 44, 216 N.W.2d at 128), 122. The insurance mess after a snowmobile crash is its own article, at /news/minnesota-snowmobile-atv-accident-claims/.
Even on the list, the operator still owes you something
People hear “primary assumption of risk” and think the ballpark or the rink is off the hook for everything. It isn’t. The doctrine covers the risks of the game, not the operator’s own carelessness.
In July 1954, a 12-year-old paid 50 cents for an open grandstand seat at the St. Paul ball club’s park. Late in the game an usher he was friends with invited him to sit in an open box seat behind first base, and a misthrown ball from infield practice hit him above the left eye. The supreme court sent the case to trial. The usher’s invitation “did expose him to a greater risk than he had accepted when he purchased his ticket”, and “[a] patron assumes only the risk of injury from hazards inherent in the sport, not the risk of injury arising from the proprietor’s negligence.” Aldes v. St. Paul Ball Club, Inc., 251 Minn. 440, 441–43, 88 N.W.2d 94 (1958).
The roller rink case says it the same way: “Negligent maintenance and supervision of a skating rink are not inherent risks of the sport itself.” Wagner, 396 N.W.2d at 226. Notice how that case came out, though. A 57-year-old grandmother fell leaving the rink. She said a dished metal ramp in bad light did it; the rink’s evidence was that she’d told people she lost her balance avoiding a child. The court held both theories properly went to the jury, and the jury found her 100 percent at fault. Id. at 225–27. Being right about the rule doesn’t win the facts for you.
And here’s a correction to something lawyers say all the time: that a defendant who “enlarges” the risk loses the doctrine. The Court of Appeals said exactly that in Henson. The supreme court, reviewing it, said this: “We have never explicitly decided whether there is an enlargement-of-the-risk exception to the doctrine of implied primary assumption of risk, and we need not do so today.” 922 N.W.2d at 191 n.2. Aldes gets you to the same place on ordinary negligence. Just don’t cite the supreme court for an enlargement exception it says it hasn’t adopted.
Minnesota never wrote a ski statute
There’s no Minnesota statute listing the risks a skier accepts or the duties a ski area keeps. I searched the Revisor’s index of the 2025 and 2026 Minnesota Statutes for “ski area”, “ski lift”, “ski slope”, “skier”, and “passenger tramway”. “Ski area”, “ski lift”, and “ski slope” return nothing. “Skier” returns two sections about cross-country ski passes.
The Legislature knows how to write an inherent-risk statute. It did it for livestock activities, defining the “[i]nherent risks of livestock activities” and immunizing nonprofits and those who donate to them from those risks. Minn. Stat. § 604A.12, subds. 1(b), 2. In 2015 it did it for agritourism, protecting a farm operator from “the inherent risks of agritourism activities” if he posts warning signs, and not protecting him from his own negligence. § 604A.40, subds. 2–3. So a harvest-your-own farm has an inherent-risk statute. A ski hill doesn’t.
The recreational-use statute won’t fill the gap for a commercial hill. It strips an owner’s duty of care only for “an owner who gives written or oral permission for the use of the land for recreational purposes without charge”. § 604A.22. A “charge” includes “any admission price asked or charged for services, entertainment, recreational use, or other activity”. § 604A.21, subd. 2. A lift ticket is an admission price. I covered who that statute does protect at /news/minnesota-recreational-land-use-liability/.
What actually beats you now is the paper
Soderberg said it in a footnote. Spirit Mountain, like many ski operators, relies on express assumption of risk instead: “It requires patrons to execute forms and wear lift tickets whereby patrons expressly assume all risks of injury and release their legal rights.” 922 N.W.2d at 206 n.5.
That’s the doctrine that matters on a ski hill, a trampoline park, a climbing gym, or any place that hands you a tablet to sign at the counter. Express assumption of risk is still primary assumption of risk, but the consent comes from a document you signed instead of from a court’s list of sports, and whether it covers what happened to you depends on what it says. Whether the release you signed actually covers the business’s own negligence is the subject of /news/minnesota-liability-waivers-exculpatory-clauses/. Read it before you assume the form ended your case.
Ballpark, golf course, hockey rink: you still take the flying object. Everywhere else in Minnesota, “you knew the risk” is just an argument about percentages, unless you signed it away.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents people hurt in Minnesota, including in recreational accidents where a business or another participant says the injury was part of the game. Whether the doctrine applies, whether a release covers what happened, and how fault gets divided can each decide a claim. Read about our personal injury practice, then send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1a (fault includes unreasonable assumption of risk not constituting express consent or primary assumption of risk); Minn. Stat. § 604A.12, subd. 1(b) (inherent risks of livestock activities), subd. 2 (immunity); Minn. Stat. § 604A.21, subd. 2 (charge defined); Minn. Stat. § 604A.22 (owner who permits recreational use without charge); Minn. Stat. § 604A.40, subd. 1(c) (agritourism activity includes harvest-your-own), subd. 1(f) (inherent risks of agritourism activity), subd. 2 (liability limited; negligence excepted), subd. 3 (posting notice); 2015 Minn. Laws ch. 44, § 36 (enacting § 604A.40, per its history line); Revisor of Statutes search index, 2025 and 2026 Minnesota Statutes, searched for “ski area”, “ski lift”, “ski slope”, “skier”, “passenger tramway”, and “inherent risks”, with “snowmobile” as a control term; Springrose v. Willmore, 292 Minn. 23, 24–27, 192 N.W.2d 826 (1971); Aldes v. St. Paul Ball Club, Inc., 251 Minn. 440, 441–43, 88 N.W.2d 94 (1958); Wagner v. Thomas J. Obert Enters., 396 N.W.2d 223, 225–27 (Minn. 1986); Grisim v. TapeMark Charity Pro-Am Golf Tournament, 415 N.W.2d 874, 875 (Minn. 1987); Alwin v. St. Paul Saints Baseball Club, Inc., 672 N.W.2d 570, 571–74 (Minn. Ct. App. 2003); Daly v. McFarland, 812 N.W.2d 113, 120, 122 (Minn. 2012); Soderberg v. Anderson, 922 N.W.2d 200, 202–06 & nn.5–6 (Minn. 2019); Henson v. Uptown Drink, LLC, 922 N.W.2d 185, 188–91 & n.2 (Minn. 2019). This article is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.