Extreme Sports Industry Facing More Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Complaints

In April 2013, a racer died at Tough Mudder, an extreme sports event. Although it was the first death for that particular extreme sports business, many advocates have since come forward arguing that Tough Mudder and other similar endurance marathon events can do much more to protect participants from personal injury and death.

The Tough Mudder victim was 28-year-old Avishek Sengupta, who worked for a technology firm. Sengupta reportedly drowned after spending 8 minutes in a muddy pool after another racer, who did not see him, jumped into the pool and landed on top of Sengupta.

Sengupta’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit in May of this year, alleging that personal injury and death can be prevented at such extreme sport races if event officials would take more basic safety measures, such as tracking individual racers to make sure they get out of the water. The wrongful death lawsuit claims that it took the life guard too long to find Sengupta, and it took race officials too long to summon an ambulance to the site.

“Lines have to be drawn between what the participants are signing up for and what they’re actually getting,” says Sengupta’s attorney, Robert J. Gilbert of the Andover, Mass.-based firm Gilbert & Renton. “Participants sign up for the challenge, but it’s less clear that they sign up for the dangers—particularly the undisclosed dangers or gratuitous dangers.”

Tough Mudder’s website says about that particular obstacle: “Test your fear of heights with this 12-foot-high jump into a deep, muddy water pit. Don’t think too much before you leap—you’ll hold up everyone else, and the volunteers at the top of the platform don’t like to babysit Mudders. Unless you want a loud earful from them, you’d better just jump.”

Gilbert also argues that the West Virginia Tough Mudder obstacles are “gratuitous,” and the nature of the event would not have suffered if organizers had bothered to take additional safety precautions. “As a result [of the muddy water] it was impossible for participants to see if there was somebody down below them before jumping in the water, and it was impossible for lifeguards to determine if somebody was still underwater who had not resurfaced. … There’s nothing about cloudy water that’s essential to the challenge of jumping into water from that height and then swimming out. That could have eliminated the risk.”

Extreme sports organizers often point to waivers as a legal method of covering themselves from personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits, but safety advocates are now arguing that waivers are not enough. In some cases, such as the Tough Mudder event, the organizers implicitly acknowledge the dangers by calling their waivers by joke names such as the “Death Waiver.” Tough Mudder’s particular Death Waiver does not mince words, especially in this final statement: “In summation, the TM event is a hazardous activity that presents the ultimate physical and mental challenge to participants. … Catastrophic injuries are rare; however, we feel that our participants should be aware of the possibility. These injuries can include permanent disabilities, spinal injuries and paralysis, stroke, heart attack, and even death.”

An article in the Annals of Emergency Medicine says this of extreme sports dangers:  “For a marathon or triathlon, a significant amount of training is involved. In some of these endurance events, effective training may prevent problems such as dehydration or rhabdomyolysis, but it is doubtful that training will enhance performance or prevent injury in an event in which obstacles include having to jump off a 9-foot height or run through a field of electrical wires (while the participant is wet and hot). Training might not have prevented many of the injuries that occurred in this event.”

Safety experts believe part of the problem currently is the explosion in popularity of extreme sports. Some argue that, as more people participate, more insurance companies will want to mitigate the risk. In the meantime, however, the companies do not face many legal consequences, and participants are at huge risk of personal injury or death.

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