Water Tubing Injury Lawsuit In California

In Record v. Reason (1999) four adults, including the plaintiff and defendant, went waterskiing and tubing on Castaic Lake in Southern California. The plaintiff was injured when he fell from the tube during what he claimed was an abrupt and fast turn executed by the defendant, the owner of the tube and the driver and part owner of the boat. The court held, with one dissent, that the trial court was correct in granting summary judgment to the defendant on the basis of the primary assumption of risk doctrine. This issue which provoked the dissent was whether there was a triable issue of fact as to whether the plaintiff's preride request to the defendant to "go slow and take it easy" because of a preexisting back injury could form the basis for an "explicit understanding" to vary the norms of the sport such that would vitiate application of the primary assumption of risk doctrine. (Record, supra, 73 Cal. App. 4th at pp. 482-484 and 487-491.) Nothing similar to that issue is implicated here.