Equine Law Blog

Julie’s latest courtroom win involved a case where the plaintiff, a professional horse trainer, performed chores at a private breeding farm for a few hours on certain days of the week and occasionally rode their horses. One of the horses the plaintiff rode was a young, green broke Paint horse stallion. The plaintiff rode this horse in a round pen on three occasions, without any problems. On her fourth ride in the round pen, however, the plaintiff claimed that the ride was proceeding well until the horse saw one of the stable owners walking on the property. Moments after the stallion saw the stable owner the plaintiff claimed the horse bucked and, after she jumped off, trampled her.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiff claimed that the farm owners were negligent for allowing her to ride the stallion and for not warning her that the horse would misbehave when one of the farm owners was in the area. She also raised a claim of premises liability.

Fershtman argued that the plaintiff’s lawsuit should be dismissed because the plaintiff failed to prove that the stallion had any propensities to injure anybody or that the farm owners knew or should have known of any dangerous propensities. Although the plaintiff claimed that the stallion misbehaved and injured her in response to a farm owner being in the area, the plaintiff also admitted that a horse can misbehave for any reason. In addition, the plaintiff could not explain why the horse acted calmly and stood quietly when the very same person came to her assistance after she was injured. In requesting dismissal of the premises liability claims, Fershtman argued that the plaintiff failed to prove any dangerous condition of the land and that a saddle horse was not a “condition” of land. The Court agreed with Fershtman that all claims in the case should be dismissed.

To learn more about this ruling or Foster Swift’s Equine Law services, please contact Julie Fershtman at jfershtman@fosterswift.com.