For crying out loud, just when you had heard ever possible legal abuse story another one pops up.

A mountain biker fell off his bike while riding down a hill in the Kolapore Uplands Wilderness Area in Canada. This in itself is not unusual and what mountain biker doesn’t regularly fall off their bike (for the record that’s why bikers wear helmets)? Unfortunately, this mountain biker, James Leone, was also a personal injury lawyer and is attempting to leverage the misfortune of his fall into a fortune via a million-dollar lawsuit. It’s hard to imagine a mountain biker that doesn’t understand the inherent risks of trail riding and the ruts, holes and rocks on the trails are all part of the inherent beauty and excitement of the sport. Unfortuanately, even in Canada personal injury lawyers don’t hesitate to file claims regardless of the merits or the external costs that they place on everyone involved.

Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, the non-profit bike clubs named (and those not named) will likely be required to purchase expensive liability insurance and the landowners, park services, and others might simply decide to eliminate mountain biking all together instead of facing the potential of more lawsuits from clowns like this. It’s amazing the carnage that one bad apple (with a JD) can do.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 6:08 am by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.