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If you sign a waiver then get hurt, you may be unable to sue for compensation.

That is among the lessons in a recent B.C. Supreme Court ruling that determined the release Blake Jamieson had signed before biking in Whistler in 2009 barred him from suing the resort over an accident that left him in a wheelchair.

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Jamieson, who earned a degree in radiology at the University of B.C. since the fall, claimed in his suit that Whistler “failed to warn him of the risks involved” in riding in the bike park, and he had sought compensation for his injuries.

Jamieson was a competent rider capable of hitting double black-diamond trails and for three years had been a volunteer patroller at the bike park before he took on the A-Line Trail on Aug. 28, 2009, according to Justice Neena Sharma’s ruling.

It was a trail the biker knew, and it was classified with a single black diamond.

A run of that designation was described by the resort as having “a mixture of long steep descents, loose trail surfaces, numerous natural and man-made obstacles, including: jumps, ramps, elevated features, berms, drops, rocks and other terrain variations.”