The state is not responsible for injuries a Salt Lake man suffered during a 1998 avalanche in Little Cottonwood Canyon, the Utah Supreme Court has ruled.
In its Tuesday opinion, a unanimous court ruled the slide was a natural condition and that the state, the Utah Department of Transportation and the town of Alta are protected under the Governmental Immunity Act.
The decision upholds a lower court ruling that dismissed the civil lawsuit.
Paul Blackner sued the agencies after he was trapped in a March 14, 1998, avalanche, the second of two in the White Pines avalanche chute that day.
Transportation officials stopped traffic on the two-lane U-210 to clean snow from the first slide, which buried part of the road and blocked the downhill lane.
As Blackner and others waited on the roadside for the completion of the snow removal, a second avalanche struck about 30 minutes after the first. The slide scattered seven cars and a UTA bus across U-210.
Blackner, 28, suffered a shattered pelvis, broken femur, collapsed lungs and lacerated internal organs. A UDOT avalanche forecaster also was trapped and injured by the falling snow.
Blackner's original suit accused UDOT and Alta of failing to properly manage the first avalanche, thus leading to his injuries in the second.
But the high court determined the snowpack and first avalanche led to Blackner's injuries, not negligence on the part of state employees. Traffic would not have been stopped had it not been for the first avalanche, according to the opinion.
The injuries "arose out of a natural condition existing on publicly owned or controlled land," a clear provision of the Immunity Act, the justices ruled.
Assistant Attorney General Brent Burnett said Tuesday's ruling reinforces a decades-old statute protecting state agencies from civil litigation stemming from acts of nature.
"The court correctly interpreted that the government cannot be held responsible for nature," Burnett said.
Given Utah's large amount of state land still in its natural state, a ruling in Blackner's favor could have opened the door for similar lawsuits, Burnett said.
"The potential liability, if we were to be held responsible for what nature does, that would be concerning," he said.
Blackner's attorney, Tad Draper, was out of town and unavailable for comment Tuesday.
E-mail: awelling@desnews.com