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Boarding
Stable Liability Releases – Who is Held Harmless?
Q: I
have my horse at a barn and the owners recently sold it. The new owners just turned all the waivers over except mine.
Is that legal? Because now I'm riding on their
property and I board there but they don't have a waiver
for me! What if I get hurt or something? And they won't
transfer it over. I don't know why.
Is it legal for them to do that? How can I get a
waiver?
A:
The liability releases that barn owners typically
have their boarders sign are generally intended to
protect the barn owners, not the boarders.
This means that if you or your horse cause injury
to someone else, you can be held liable. The kind of liability release that you want is the kind that
releases you from liability!
At ELS, we customize liability releases depending
upon the situation. For example, if you invite a friend
to come out and ride your horse and your horse bucks
them off, you'd need a specific type of release to
protect you from liability.
Similarly, you'd need another type of specific
release if you leased your horse to someone.
The more specific the release is, the more likely
it is to be upheld in court – see Liability Releases
on Equine
Legal Solutions’ website for more information.
It
is interesting that the barn owners turned over the
releases to the new owners, because unless the release
specifies the name of the barn rather than the owners,
it would not likely be effective to protect the new
owners. A
liability release is essentially a contract, and it's a
contract between the parties specified in the release.
If you aren't a party to the contract, you aren't
protected. |
