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Abandoned
Tack at Boarding Facility?
Q:
My husband and I run a small boarding facility.
From time to time, we have boarders who leave our
facility. They take their horses with them, of
course, but sometimes, they leave tack, blankets,
halters and other items for months at a time, or they
never return to pick them up at all. Are we
required to store our former boarders’ stuff? If
so, for how long?
A:
This problem is fairly common for boarding facilities.
Many boarding stable owners try to prevent this problem
by specifying in their boarding contracts that items
left behind at the end of the boarding term will be
stored for a fixed period of time (e.g., 90 days) at the
boarder’s expense. To avoid confusion, the
contract should also state that after 90 days, the
left-behind items will become the property of the
boarding stable.
If
your boarding contract does not currently address this
situation, and you have left-behind equipment occupying
valuable space, you may wish to send the property
owner(s) a letter stating that you believe they are the
owners of certain items (list the items) on your
property and that if they do not remove those items by a
certain date (e.g., two weeks), you will begin charging
them a specified monthly storage fee (e.g., $100) until
the items are removed. The letter should also
specify that if the items are not removed within a
specified period of time, they will become the property
of the boarding stable. To minimize the
possibility that the former boarders could claim they
didn’t receive the letter, you should send the letter
via a method that provides for proof of delivery, such
as Federal Express.
If you
dispose of a former boarder’s possessions without
following the above steps, the former boarder may have a
legal claim for “conversion” against you, and the
amount of potential damages would be the value of their
property. In essence, “conversion” occurs when
one party who has been entrusted with the care of an
item takes that item and treats it as his or her own.
Even though you may not have specifically assumed any
responsibility for the former boarder’s items, the
former boarder might have a reasonable expectation that
they could leave items at your facility for a short
transition period. Accordingly, it is advisable
for boarding stables to have a documented process for
dealing with left-behind items belonging to former
boarders, and to follow that process.
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