A woman who was paralyzed in a skydiving accident in Toledo in 2017 has reached a settlement with Skydive Toledo, the plaintiff’s attorney announced Tuesday.
The agreement also outlines safety measures that Skydive Toledo must follow to prevent similar accidents in the future.
“We are pleased Skydive Toledo has agreed to address these deficiencies. Frankly, for too long, the skydive industry has gotten away with troublesome conduct by blaming the sometimes first-time jumper and taking no responsibility for its actions. Skydive Toledo has stepped up big-time here, recognizing these changes can make a difference,” said Thomas Breen, an attorney at Schroeter Goldmark & Bender who represented the injured skydiver, Jaime Beenen.
Beenen filed a personal injury lawsuit against Skydive Toledo and manager Heather Whittaker, along with Lewis County as the owner of the airport property and Josephine Air, a company that subleases the South Lewis County Airport property to Skydive Toledo, in 2020, accusing the parties of negligence for their alleged roles in her July 2, 2017, accident.
Breenen and her fiancé had booked beginner skydiving solo experiences through Skydive Toledo as a “bucket list” item before the couple’s wedding that August, according to previous Chronicle reporting.
She reported she was concerned about the safety of static line jumping, a kind of skydiving where the skydiver jumps alone and the main parachute is deployed via a “static line” attached to the plane.
Ultimately, she did sign the company’s nine-page waiver and attended the four-hour pre-jump class on July 2, 2017.
“Jaime Beenen went through the same static line skydive course that everyone had been going through since Skydive Toledo started in 1973. She went through the course and had to pass a test before she was allowed to jump,” Whittaker said in an email to The Chronicle. “The class and test covered aspects of flying the parachute and included a map and drawings of how to fly a landing pattern, etc. She passed the test. It is taught and reinforced that students are in charge of piloting their canopy and the radio person is simply there as a backup.”
That same day, the couple ascended from the South Lewis County Airport — also known as Ed Carlson Memorial Field —and jumped.
Beenen later reported that she let herself fall until she reached the point she’d been instructed, before flaring her parachute — a procedure to slow a skydiver’s descent — to prepare for landing.
Then, she said she heard her Skydive Toledo instructor-in-training yell “No!” through the one-way radio — a statement that has been contested by Skydive Toledo.
Regardless, Beenen unflared her parachute.
The ground was rapidly approaching and so she flared her parachute again, but by then it was too late. She hit the ground at a high enough rate of speed to crush her spinal cord, rendering her paralyzed from the chest down.
“While neither party admitted fault, Skydive Toledo ultimately agreed to pay Beenen an amount that is strictly confidential,” Schroeter Goldmark & Bender said in a news release.
Skydive Toledo also agreed to only permit rated instructors or coaches who have been rated by the United States Parachute Association (USPA), a private governing body for parachuters in the United States, to guide student jumpers midair over the radio; and to conduct an investigation, document the investigation, submit the investigation to the USPA and preserve the incident report when when a jumper at Skydive Toledo is injured and needs to be transported to a hospital or if their jump results in death.
“We feel like we accomplished something here for the benefit of future student skydivers. We think this case should be presented at national skydiving conferences; other skydive facilities could stand to learn the lessons Skydive Toledo learned,” said Breen.
While Skydive Toledo did agree to the settlement, Whittaker told The Chronicle, “We agreed to settle because it was cheaper than flying all the FAA and USPA experts out that were coming from the East Coast to tell them they were incorrect in their findings. If they thought they had a case that would actually have gone somewhere, they never would have tried to settle.”
Regarding the decision to settle, Breen said, “It’s more difficult to find a skydive professional to testify against a skydive outfit than it is to find someone to speak out about their own profession in just about any other field; medicine, police — you name it. Here, we found experts who confirmed that even under the USPA guidelines, Skydive Toledo’s use of someone with no certification ratings to serve as a radio instructor was improper, but the experts were unwilling to testify against a fellow skydive owner. One expert had the courage to speak up and demonstrate that Skydive Toledo’s actions were not only negligent but were also grossly negligent. The court relied on this declaration and others when it refused to dismiss Ms. Beenen’s case,” said Breen.
Despite agreeing to settle, Whittaker and Skydive Toledo still adamantly believe Beenen bears sole responsibility for her accident.
“In my opinion, Jaime Beenen didn't follow the instructions she was given in the course and her actions under parachute led directly to her injury,” Whittaker said in an email to a Chronicle reporter, later adding, “I understand that in this day and age everybody wants to sue someone when they make a decision that has unintended consequences. People just can't accept their mistakes. It has to be someone else's fault.”
Whittaker said she believes Beenen could have avoided injury, even after unflaring her parachute, had she done a parachute landing fall (PLF) she had been taught in the pre-jump class.
“A PLF is a tuck and roll that distributes the downward effect of the body across multiple parts of your body. Part of the PLF is also to tuck your head, something that protects your back and neck. If Jaime had done the PLF when her feet touched the ground, it is my opinion that the skydive would have come to an uneventful ending,” Whittaker said.
The settlement comes after Skydive Toledo attempted to countersue Beenen in July 2020 for filing her personal injury lawsuit earlier that year.
Beenen’s suit was initially filed in Lewis County Superior Court in May 2020 and was moved to Thurston County Superior Court in June 2020, according to court documents.
Thurston County Superior Court dismissed Skydive Toledo’s lawsuit against Beenen in October 2023, according to court documents and the news release from Beenen’s attorney.
“It’s not exactly commonplace to sue a student jumper who was rendered quadriplegic at a business. But this lawsuit against Ms. Beenen was particularly egregious because it was based on illegal provisions in a contract, provisions that are flatly contrary to Washington law,” Breen said in a news release.
After the lawsuit was thrown out and the contract terms deemed illegal, “Skydive Toledo was surprised to learn that, under Washington law, it must pay attorney fees for having sued an injured patron under the illegal contract,” Schroeter Goldmark & Bender said in a news release.
As a result of that ruling, Skydive Toledo, Josephine Air and Whittaker were ordered to pay Beenen $95,552.50 in attorney fees, according to court documents, which indicate that payment was fully satisfied as of Nov. 22, 2023.
“This is the first of many lessons for skydive businesses,” Breen said. “Make sure your lawyer is licensed in your state and familiar with your state’s contract laws before you use a liability waiver or follow any recommendation to sue injured jumpers.”
After Skydive Toledo’s lawsuit was dismissed, “Beenen continued with the prosecution of her claims against Skydive Toledo up until the eve of trial, when the parties reached a settlement,” Schroeter Goldmark & Bender said in a news release.
“While we feel terrible for Jaime's situation, the outcome was a direct result of the decisions she made under parachute. It is my opinion that if she had followed her training, the outcome of the jump would have been very different indeed,” Whittaker said.
Beenen’s case against Lewis County, the airport owner, was dismissed by the court and is now headed for appeal.
“We look forward to the appeal covering issues such as Lewis County giving Skydive Toledo not only the space on its property to run skydive training classes, but also the apparent backing of a governmental institution, thereby covering the public’s view of the serious deficiencies happening at Skydive Toledo,” Breen said. “That case presents some fascinating legal issues. Onward we go.”
