I have seen this sign many times at stables and boarding facilities in Oregon and New Mexico about the statutes protecting owners from liability if a human gets hurt or killed. I believe over forty states have some variation of this statute. I think this law should also extend to horses. If you put yourself, and you also bring your horse(your property) around other horses, you accept the inherent risk of being around horses. I think people get sued over injured horses, even when it was their horse that went ape and hurt itself. Perfect example, in New Mexico, my brother got a job putting in the first rides on all the young horses at the this track. He got on one and started riding it out in the large area in the middle of the track. It split in half, hogging its head and bawling. My brother made it about four jumps before he hit the ground like an over weight Indian falling from seven feet. The horse bolts off and runs around finding a giant hole the owners of the track dug. It took quite the spill. The hole was large enough the horse was trapped. I was about fifteen or sixteen, and I remember the owner of the horse screaming, "You better hope that horse is alright! You will be paying for it!" I remember not knowing if he was speaking to my brother who was still on his back trying to catch his breath or the old guy who owned the complex... I remember thinking it wasn't anyone's fault, just like the sign says. anyway something to talk about...
Pretty close to the same signs we have in Texas...two weeks ago 5 horses escaped their pasture somehow and ended up on the Highway..a lady was just coming over a rise in the Hwy and plowed into and killed all 5 horses...she was trapped inside her car until they had to cut her out...but under Texas Open Range Law, it is a NO Fault deal...the horses escaped due to a neighbor that had torn down some fence, thinking it was his fence to repair/replace and didn't inform the owners..
those laws are just one hoop, that a good lawyer will easily jump through. they might stopped the timid or the cheap but if it involves a death of a child, all bets are off.
Are you saying it is timid and weak to honor your word by not suing someone if you are hurt after entering a facility where dangerous things are known to happen, as per the statute you must walk past upon entering said facility?
timid= hurt, feels angry about it but won't do anything cheap=hurt, feels angry about it but won't pay for a good enough lawyer to get restitution. If your stupidity or carelessness hurts me, my family member, my horse or my business, I will own you, no matter what a cardboard sign on your wall says. The legal precedent has been accumulating in all the states with equine liability laws. Stupidity, carelessness and negligence have not been successful defenses. The law only protects those who show proper due diligence in their behavior around horses
If someone was blatantly stupid, I can see it, sure. That line is a very blurry line. Simple possible situation, inexperienced rider gets thrown, horse busts through side of corral injuring a child standing on the outside of that fence? Is anyone at fault here? In your eyes? I could see a case being built both ways.
I'm not a Judge, never even been on jury duty, but I can tell you I would prefer to have insurance in that situation than not. For your example, I'd say the parents of injured child are going after the horse owner, the trainer working with said horse owner and the land owner. Since the land owner probably has the deepest pockets, they're first in line. Then the land owner or their insurance carrier will sue the horse owner, who ever sold that owner the horse and the trainer maybe even the guy that built the corral. If it was you or me, it might not go far but juries love injured/dead children so all bets are off
Usually the law (criminal or civil) is applied based on a "reasonable person" test. For example, a reasonable person would warn a farrier if they knew a particular horse was dangerous to work on rather than lying when the horse started cow kicking - "Oh he never did that before . . ." I'm sure every farrier has heard that one.
It is one of the few things a client can say, along with, "It must be you/it doesn't like men" that makes me very grumpy. I don't hear that very often, and when I do it is a clueless owner that cannot understand their horse is a cull.
I worked with a TWH shoer back in the 70's that would buy up the "dinks" in these bigger barns, that he wanted to keep and send them ASAP to the killer pen out of state. It worked for yrs and he occasionally made money, until one drunken night up town he blabbed. Needless to say, my phone started ringing off the hook. One of the client's questions were always about my opinion of eating horsemeat, God forgive me, I lied, I lied, I lied. After that he continued to drink and drink, worked for me for a yr and then went to auctioneering school, dried out, found God, married a good woman. He just wasn't meant to be a shoer.
In order to be proactive, whenever a horse acts up at all or I hear a story of misbehavior from it's female owner, I now say; "The horse was probably abused by a woman".
Michigan. We used to have a huge Walking Horse circuit. A huge number of "good old boys" came North for the factory jobs. With the new found money from all the overtime pay; they all bought TWHs. There was a ring of TWH barns all around Detroit. Seemed like the management guys would have Arabs, Morgans, ASBs and TBs and the blue collar guys had TWHs, Missouri foxtroters and Racking horses Kalamazoo, MI hosted the Little Celebration, second only to Shelbyville,TN for decades. All that's gone now
