I understand people can, with a few loaded words, convince naive juries of things. I'm just surprised that two horsewomen are so easily swayed to lead the charge. Every horse at a stable could hurt a kid. Without any malice at all.
I read the post and agree it sounds like it was a rather rank stallion. But a couple things jumped out at me. First... "Stallion" in an of itself should serve as a warning and an assumed risk for any reasonably knowledgeable horse person. It seems these people did one thing right and that was that they were pretty good about warning and teaching students not to mess with that horse. It's not like they were using the horse for kiddie lessons. The kids knew to keep their fingers away. They didn't leave the stallion running loose among the children, they had him in a stall. No kid was hurt here, a trainer was.
I think they'd probably warn the next trainer too. "Hey we need a trainer for our rather rank stallion... see, he killed our last trainer in a jumping incident last week." The guy the horse hurt was not a kid, it was one of the trainers who presumably knew what he was getting into. So would the next trainer hired. If owning a rank horse and hiring a trainer to fix it doesn't release you of liability at least toward that trainer, then I hope you're prepared to give your home and all your money to whoever you send SL to to be fixed, if he gets hurt. Not trying to be harsh, just trying to put things in perspective on who you should be trying to protect.
The horse might have been a rank, difficult horse, but the accident as described here is something that might well have happened with the sweetest old school horse in the barn.
I have to agree with Hair.
Becky
I did equine related litigation for many years. I'm just telling you how it would probably shake out.
May not like it, may not think it's fair, but that's the way it is.
Because of the perceived unfairness of the legal situation, in Georgia an "Equine Immunity Statute" was enacted a number of years ago. It's been thoroughly litigated and has stood up pretty well -- but there is still an exception where the owner of a horse has concealed or failed to disclose an unusual vicious propensity.
As a general rule, it doesn't fly with experienced horsemen, because of the provisions of the immunity statute. For example, I could never sue anybody for an injury I incurred, I've been riding too long and I'm too well aware of all the things that can go wrong.
About the only way an experienced horseman can sue is a situation that I was involved in probably 20 years ago, where a stallion was sold at a sale while Aced up within an inch of his life . . . and then nearly killed the purchaser when the sedative wore off. That was of course a claim for fraud etc. and the plaintiffs got a big judgment.
Your stables. Your horses but...... You called me a HORSEWOMAN! About time. Made my day.:')