A Clatsop County Circuit Court judge has ruled that the state and several logging companies are not liable for a teenager’s death in 2021 at Nicolai Mountain, citing the state’s recreational immunity protection.

A $3.3 million lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Tonya Osgood on behalf of the estate of her daughter, Lillyan Bauer, a 15-year-old Washington state girl who died after riding her all-terrain vehicle to the top of an unmarked rock pile in a gravel pit in Clatsop State Forest.

Bauer unexpectedly encountered a sudden, sheer drop-off at the top of the pile and fell 20 feet, with her ATV landing on top of her.

The state, along with Western Forest Products, J.M. Browning Logging Inc., Stimson Lumber Co., Warrenton Fiber Co., Hampton Tree Farms and Fallon Logging Co., were named as defendants.

Because the companies had been using the gravel pit for construction and maintenance of logging roads leading up to Bauer’s death, Osgood argued they had been negligent due to cutting away half of the rock pile and failing to put up signs warning of the cut-away.

Oregon law provides recreational immunity to the state and other landowners against personal injury, death or property damage that arises out of the use of land for recreational purposes.

The Oregon Department of Forestry manages the Nicolai Mountain off-highway vehicle riding area about 25 miles east of Astoria, but does not maintain the nearby areas often used by riders outside the trail system, like the rock pile where the teenager’s death occurred.

Judge Kirk Wintermute ruled that recreational immunity remained applicable to the case without exception, and that neither the logging companies nor the state were at fault.

In an opinion letter, the judge found that Department of Forestry employees were aware of an accident on rock piles in Clatsop State Forest in the month or so before the teenager’s death but chose not to take action.

“The failure to act by the Oregon Department of Forestry and its partners in this case was certainly tragic, likely reckless, and possibly shameful,” Wintermute wrote, “but under the laws of the state of Oregon a reasonable jury could not find liability based on the facts presented.”