A woman injured herself in her very first skiing lesson because she had not been instructed how to stop, Dublin Circuit Civil Court heard yesterday.
Paulette Sharkey (38), Eden Road, Sandycove, Co Dublin, a sales executive with Eircom Phone Watch, told Mr Justice Esmond Smyth that after moving off on her skis she realised she did not know how to stop.
She said that as a result she had fallen and broken her wrist on the nursery slope at the ski club of Ireland, Kilternan, Co Dublin, on February 1st, 2002.
Mr Justice Smyth told Paul O'Neill, for the Ski Club, that his client had not been negligent in any way and dismissed Ms Sharkey's claim for up to €38,000 damages. "Falls will inevitably occur on ski slopes," Judge Smyth told Ms Sharkey.
He said he accepted the evidence of ski instructor Tom Ryan that Ms Sharkey had been told how to move forward on the short nursery slope which ended in an incline for the purpose of automatically stopping beginners. Mr Ryan had told the court that physically executing a stop with the skis was a much more complicated procedure and was not explained to beginners until they had mastered the art of moving forward and staying upright on the nursery slope.
He said beginners were firstly shown how to move forward and then sidestep back up the slope. Ms Sharkey had been only 10 minutes into her first lesson and would have been instructed how to stop herself before moving on to the steeper slopes.
Ms Sharkey told the court she had never visited Kilternan ski club's artificial ski slopes before and had never been skiing before the accident.