In June 2010 70-year-old Ervin Evert was hiking in the Kitty Creek area just east of Yellowstone National Park when he came upon a bear as it was recovering from tranquilizers administered by a federal research team. The suit brought by his widow claims that the team, under the auspices of the USGS, had removed warning signs from the research site too early. But U.S. attorneys say that the Wyoming Recreational Use Act makes it immune from liability — that in effect, anyone who enters a national forest is on their own and any act of god or nature is just that. The law, according to the attorneys, requires a “willful or malicious failure to guard or warn against a dangerous condition,” and they say there was no malice, just a coincidence that Evert found himself confronting a bear that happened to have been part of research. A federal judge in Cheyenne now has to decide whether or not to throw the case out.

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