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SALT LAKE CITY — A bill limiting liability at state-built Olympic facilities is headed to the Utah House floor.
HB541, sponsored by Rep. Jon Hawkins, R-Pleasant Grove, would extend caps already in place at ski resorts to the three facilities built with state tax dollars for the 2002 Winter Games and operated by the nonprofit Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation.
Those facilities, the Utah Olympic Park near Park City that's also owned by the foundation, the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns, and the Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Midway, host more than 2 million people a year.
All are set to be used again for the 2034 Winter Games.
"At each of our venues, safety is our No. 1 priority," the foundation's CEO, Colin Hilton, told members of the House Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee that voted unanimously to favorably recommend the bill to the full House.
"Although accidents are rare, the ever-increasing liability insurance costs associated with these venues has become prohibitively expensive. It has gone from 1% to 2% of my expense budget to nearly 10%, a rise of almost a million dollars since I started in 2006," Hilton said.
The cost of liability protection for the three venues has gone from about $300,000 a year to $1.2 million, he said, pointing out the bill is narrowly tailored to apply to the three venues run for elite and community athletes with the help of an endowment created from 2002 Olympic profits.
The state's original investment in the facilities was repaid by Olympic organizers, but the Utah Legislature has in recent years appropriated more than $90 million for improvements at those and other venues.
Hawkins said the limits on liability would be the same as state law set for ski resorts. According to the bill, no more than $827,000 could be awarded to an individual or a total of $3,329,200 for a single incident. The limits do no apply to punitive damages or a wrongful death.
There's an "inherent risk in winter sports," he said.
One committee member, Rep. David Shallenberger, R-Orem, said other countries take a "tough luck" approach to winter sports injuries and described the bill as "mostly to address the litigious society that we live in, in America."
Although organizers of the privately funded 2034 Winter Games expect to purchase liability insurance against possible delays or even a cancellation, they don't see the legislation having much of an effect on the cost.
"It could have a marginal impact when we go get our insurance, that there are limits in liability," Fraser Bullock, executive chair and president of the organizing committee board said. "But we'll have that insurance in place regardless."
Such policies became harder to secure after the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo were delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because Gov. Spencer Cox signed the host contract with the International Olympic Committee, the state is the ultimate guarantor of the Games.
