Missoula, MT – A federal judge, who already granted a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the host family of an exchange student from a lawsuit over his death at Whitefish Mountain Resort in 2010, has refused to do the same for the ski area.

U.S. District Court Judge Donald W. Molloy ordered last month that a jury will decide whether or not the ski resort is liable for the death of Niclas Waschle, a 16-year-old German exchange student. Waschle was skiing alone in the area surrounding Whitefish’s T-bar 2 in December 2010 when he suffocated in a tree well. Molloy ruled that tree wells did not fall under the definition of “inherent dangers and risks of skiing” as outlined in Montana’s Skier Responsibility statutes in effect at the time of Waschle’s death.

Molloy, however, put the trial date on hold as the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco hears an appeal filed by the family of Waschle over the dismissal of the host family from the lawsuit. The trial had originally been scheduled for November 30.

The original lawsuit, filed in 2013, seeks both compensatory and punitive damages and named the ski resort, the host family and the student exchange program World Experience as defendants. The plaintiffs contend that Whitefish should have blocked off the woods alongside the trail and posted warnings about the dangers of tree wells, pockets of unconsolidated snow beneath the boughs of an evergreen tree.