Jaime Beenen booked beginner skydive solo experiences with Skydive Toledo for herself and her fiancé in June 2017 as “a bucket list item” before the couple’s wedding that August.
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.
But after hearing reassurances from Skydive Toledo staff, and understanding her Groupon voucher for the skydive was non-refundable, she signed the company’s nine-page waiver and attended the four-hour pre-jump class on July 2, 2017.
That same day, the couple ascended from the South Lewis County Airport and jumped.
Beenen 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 heard her Skydive Toledo instructor-in-training yell “No!” through the one-way radio.
She 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.
Three years later, she 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.
Beenen accuses Skydive Toledo and its affiliates of gross negligence for failing to provide proper training to Beenen before the jump and for failing to provide her proper instruction over the radio.
Lewis County was accused of failing to provide “ordinary care,” defined as due diligence to prevent injury, to Breenan, who argued she was the county's business invitee, an individual invited onto a property by a business for commercial purposes.
The defendants have collectively denied Beenen’s allegations of negligence, arguing Beenen was warned of the increased danger and potential for serious injury of making a static line jump instead of the generally-safer tandem parachute jump and, by signing the waiver, she assumed the risk of partaking in that dangerous activity.
“Here are the unavoidable facts of skydiving life: Our staff is comprised of human beings who can make mistakes that can result in your injury … Your training can never be totally adequate because there is no physical way to simulate freefall while remaining on the ground. The only way to simulate it is to do it, and then it's too late to see if you can perform satisfactory,” reads a statement in a copy of the electronic waiver Beenan signed, which was submitted to Thurston County Superior Court as evidence in the case.
The waiver instructs skydiving participants not to jump if they feel their pre-jump training is inadequate, the aircraft or equipment is in bad condition or the staff are unqualified. Participants are additionally instructed to insist on different equipment, different staff or more training if they have concerns about jumping.
“If you choose to board the aircraft, you will be knowingly giving up any later claim as to the qualifications of the staff or the quality of the equipment,” reads the waiver.
The nine-page waiver includes a statement where Beenen agreed not to sue “even in the event of negligence.”
While Beenen and her attorney, Thomas Breen, acknowledged that Beenen signed the waiver, Breen argues it is invalid as the waiver wasn’t presented when Beenen purchased the vouchers on Groupon, and when she did sign on the day of the jump, Beenen only assumed the risk of the static line jump — not the “specific negligent acts that caused her injuries.”
“Nowhere does the release alert Ms. Beenen to the possibility she would be given erroneous instructions by an instructor without proper certifications in violation of industry best practices,” Breen wrote in a rebuttal.
Beenen stated she was informed an instructor would give her commands over the one-way radio but that as a general rule, she should flare her parachute when she was close to the ground.
“She did not receive instructions or any emphasis about what to do if she flared too early, nor was she told that once she started her flare she should not let go,” Breen wrote.
Lewis County has argued that, since it gave exclusive control to lessee Josephine Air and isn’t involved in Skydive Toledo’s operations, and because the condition of the property itself wasn’t a factor in the incident, the county isn’t liable for Beenen’s injuries.
“Although these traumatic injuries are terrible, it was not Lewis County’s duty to prevent their occurrence,” Lewis County Deputy Prosecutor Kevin McDowell wrote in a motion for summary judgement, a court procedure that allows a judge to rule on a case without a jury if there’s no genuine dispute about the important facts of the case.
While Breen argued against the summary judgment for Lewis County, a Thurston County judge granted Lewis County’s motion on Nov. 8.
The summary judgement frees Lewis County from the lawsuit, but not the other defendants.
A trial is currently scheduled for June 11, 2022.
