Know the Law – Hunter Injury Law - Fox17

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While hunting season in under way across the state, many people may not be aware of a recent Michigan Supreme Court decision involving an injured hunter. This week, Grand Rapids personal injury attorney, Tom Sinas, of Sinas Dramis Law Firm breaks down several laws that may apply to injured hunters and what they should know before going out into the woods.

As Sinas explained, the Michigan Supreme Court of course is a core of our highest level of jurisdiction, highest level of review, and they only take a select number of cases. So they took this case, and this case involves two hunters who were pheasant hunting and they were pheasant hunting in a group of blinds that would normally appear in a circle where typically there'd be hunters in different blinds shooting at the pheasants. These two individuals were in the same blind and ones to the left and ones to the right. The hunter to the left, puts his gun up in the air, takes a couple of shots above him and as he's bringing his gun down across his body, the gun goes off and it strikes the hunter to his right, the person standing right next to him in the blind. Of course that injured hunter has a pretty significant injury and the injured hunter files a claim pursues a lawsuit against the hunter whose gun went off. The case involves some very interesting issues of legal concepts that Sinas explained. The basic gist here is that this unfortunate accident happened not only while they were hunting, but happened in this particular way where this this gun ended up going off of course in exactly the wrong direction and ended up in exactly the wrong spot.

A lot of complexity in this case. So what was so complex about this one that had it go all the way up to the supreme court. This case is comp so complex because it illustrates the important legal concept called duty and that is what duty to people owe to another. So the basic rule of duty is that people who are engaged in things like driving or a homeowner for example, the people owe a basic what we call ordinary care duty, a duty to exercise ordinary care when you're doing these kinds of things where someone else could be injured. That was the law in Michigan for hunting all the way in the 70s and 80s. In order to pursue a claim, if you were injured hunting, you had to show that somebody else failed to exercise ordinary care. Well what changed in the 1990s in the late 1990s is the Michigan Supreme Court adopted a new standard of care for things that fall into what we call recreational activities. For recreational activities, the supreme court in 1999 said you know what, we're not going to have this normal ordinary care type standard, we're gonna have a higher standard, and the higher standard is one of recklessness, meaning that if you are injured in a recreational activity, you have to show that the person who injured you didn't just fail to use ordinary care but acted recklessly. In other words, it creates a higher standard, a higher standard the injured person has to overcome in order to pursue that that civil claim. So the first question in this case, which had never really been directly addressed is, is hunting a recreational activity, because there's never been a supreme court case that answered that conclusively until now. In this case, the supreme court said yes, hunting is a recreational activity. What that means is that if a hunter sustains an injury that is inherent to the act of hunting, then in order to pursue a claim against whoever injured the hunter, the injured hunter has to show that the other person acted that high level of carelessness, that reckless level of closeness. So that's the important takeaway for hunting across the board.

Now in this case, there's going to be some more some more things that will take place later, but the takeaway here has to do with this concept of legal duty and what is the standard because of course the higher the standard, the harder it is to pursue a claim.

Where is this case now? The supreme court, what's called remanded the case they sent the case back down to the trial court to answer a factual question. The question here is, is the way that this gentleman was injured, this gun going off as it's been moved to the side? Is that really an inherent risk of hunting? the court says for example, look if one of these hunters was in another blind, and there was a hunter across the way, and they got hit when a gun went off across the circle of blinds, well, that may be an inherent risk of hunting, but the court said we're not really sure that getting shot by someone standing next to you in a blind who's bringing their gun back down and basically shooting you off to the side. That may not be a risk inherent in hunting. So there's the distinction; is the injury really one that's inherent to hunting? or is it something that really falls outside of what you would normally inherently expect in hunting?

Here, the supreme court said, we're not really sure, we're going to send this back down to the trial court where we determine these kinds of factual disputes and that will tell us whether or not the way this man was injured is inherent to the risk of hunting. This case will continue to go on what an intriguing and interesting case that is. Once again, though, could you reiterate what the takeaway is for those who have for the hunters watching right now or the families of those who do?

Sinas said the takeaway is the more practical one, right; safety, safety, safety, redundancy, redundancy training, so that you don't end up in a case like this, because it took all the way to Michigan Supreme Court to figure out what is the level of care that is owed here. Obviously, if you avoid injury, you avoid this, this whole analysis. So it's as more practical as it is legal, and it's to be as safe as possible so you don't end up in a in a case as complicated as this.

If you are ever in a situation like that, God forbid or looking for legal representation for hunters and everyone else, contact sinasdramis.com or call 616-301-3333.

This segment is paid for by Sinas Dramis Law Firm.

source: https://www.fox17online.com/news/know-the-law/know-the-law-hunter-injury-law

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