Snowboarder Loses Eye After Premium Sporting Goggles Fail to Deflect Tree Branch

When athletes don safety goggles, especially ones manufactured by top eyewear brands, they expect one of the most vital and sensitive parts of their body to be protected. At the very least, they expect the lens to not fly off at the exact moment it’s needed most. For Shelby — a seasoned snowboarder and paramedic-in-training — her name-brand goggles could not have failed at a worse time. While at a Utah resort, Shelby and her friends spotted fellow snowboarders traversing a spot of fresh powder on a black-diamond run. Shelby followed the trail, traveling laterally to the mountain at a slow 10 mph. A patch of snow gave in, shunting her into a tree she was passing by. Her goggles clipped on a branch. Shockingly, the top-of-the-line eyewear failed on contact with the tree, the lens popping out and spiraling into the snow. Now completely exposed, the jagged branch stabbed at her face, creating a laceration on her nose. Moving unimpeded, the branch continued to impale her right eye socket, digging under the globe and causing fractures to multiple points on her skull. Before having a moment to react, a second branch quickly followed, gashing Shelby’s right eye and nearly ripping off the tip of her cornea, flaying the translucent surface.

Shelby suffered intense intraocular bleeding, a skinned cornea, and a deep laceration across the bridge of her nose. The impact also fractured her orbital floor and the part of the skull that protects the eye socket. At the hospital, doctors attempted to salvage Shelby’s eye, but the branch had severed open the top layer of her ocular globe. In the end, they had no choice but to remove the ruined tissue. She was only in her 20s and now faced a lifetime of permanent impairment, along with the loss of one of her favorite hobbies. Worse still, the injury derailed her dream of becoming a paramedic. Despite losing her eye, she was determined to keep a smile on her face and remain positive.

Shelby’s lawyer referred her case to Jake Stipp, owner of Stipp Law Firm, a few months after the incident. Jake specialized in helping the average person fight against large corporations and insurance companies with deep pockets. His first step was determining whether the ski resort or the goggle manufacturer was liable for the incident. Both routes provided formidable challenges. Myriad defenses and immunities protected the ski resort, while a product liability case required an immense amount of investigation, research, and expert work — but Jake was up for the challenge.

Resolved to take the fight to the manufacturer, Jake brought together a team of accident reconstruction experts and one of Shelby’s friends, who had been trailing behind her and witnessed the injury. Together, they returned to the ski resort and recreated the entire incident. They even painted lines in the snow to track Shelby’s movements. They identified the tree she hit along with the speeds, distances, and forces involved. From there, Jake determined potential theories of liability around the eyewear company’s product failure. He then spent many late nights reading through thousands of pages of written discovery.

The eyewear brand’s defense lawyers argued that the goggles were only meant to protect eyes from sunlight and snow. They tried to claim that no one would expect these goggles to shield skiers and snowboarders from any sort of objects or impact, despite the brand claiming to be “one of the best” in the industry. They also insisted that the goggles had met all industry standards and no other litigation involving this type of product failure had occurred in the United States. To make matters worse, they even blamed Shelby for the loss of her eye, claiming she had recklessly traversed through a gap in the trees.

To thwart these arguments, Jake needed to show that his client had been traveling at a low rate of speed laterally (rather than downhill) on the mountain. He also wanted to establish that she was not some daredevil flitting through tree gaps, as asserted. Instead, the plaintiff had been cruising along a path set by other snowboarders throughout the day. Jake’s team of experts had collected a mountain of measurements, but he needed a way to synthesize all this data for a jury to understand. He reached out to DK Global to create a 3D accident reconstruction that incorporated all the technical information his team of experts had compiled.

The 3-minute DK Global animation opened with an aerial view of the black-diamond trail and the path Shelby had taken. The bird's-eye view made Shelby's lateral route evident. After this, a 3D recreation of the accident showed her following other snowboarders before colliding into the tree. The goggle’s protective lens was shown flying off. The incident was then replayed from multiple different angles. Following this, close-ups of how she sustained her injuries were replayed, which included the branch lacerating her nose before impaling her eye. The full extent of her intense intraocular hemorrhage and right open globe injuries were detailed. A view of her skull revealed her orbital floor and lamina papyracea fractures. The animation concluded with pictures of Shelby’s eye from when she was in the hospital.

During the first mediation, the defense’s offers topped out at $2,000,000. Jake withheld the DK Global animations until a week before the second mediation, which was held on the eve of trial. The defense did not even try to discredit the animation, as they had never sent out their own accident reconstructionist to the scene. Their offer jumped up to just shy of $6,000,000 at mediation, which Jake turned down. Shortly after, the defense raised their offer to $8,750,000, and Jake agreed to settle the case. Shelby was elated with the outcome. Though it could not restore her eye, the outcome provided a sense of justice to help Shelby recover from this tragedy.

Jake Stipp, owner of Stipp Law Firm, has devoted 100% of his practice to helping the injured seek justice in all types of personal injury, elder abuse/neglect, and wrongful death cases. He has secured millions of dollars in settlements for his clients. In 2013, he was named a Top Young Attorney by the San Diego Daily Transcript. From 2016 through 2022, he was named a Super Lawyer Rising Star, a designation received by fewer than 2.5% of attorneys in California. Since 2020, he has been a member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum and was named in the San Diego Union Tribune's Readers Poll of Best Personal Injury Firms.