Abby Green · Dan Ambrose
$3,380,921.57 Verdict – Personal Injury Horse Trial Injury – The Importance of Storytelling
June 25, 2024 5:30 PM||
On a cold day in November 2017, an 18-year-old college freshman, Hailey, went with a friend and the friend’s family to a beautiful horse farm in a wealthy, rural county in Kentucky for a recreational, “family-friendly” trail ride. Eight people attended the trail ride that day, including two 18-year-olds, four minors under 12, a mom, and a dad.
The owner of the trail riding operation thought Hailey was someone who had ridden with him before and failed to have her sign a liability waiver. He did not inquire into the riding experience of Hailey. He quickly assigned Hailey a horse, and when he provided the horse to her, he said, “don’t get in the horse’s mouth; he will rear for photos.”She followed up to try to understand how to handle the horse but didn’t get any more information.
Other riders were provided horses. The group entered the corral by themselves on horses. Eventually, the operator came to the corral. He did not show the riders how to ride a horse, did not provide any instruction besides “pull back to stop and kick the horse to go,” and did not require any of the riders to demonstrate their ability to ride a horse.
The trail ride started and within 5-10 minutes, the first horse took off with an 8-year-old on it. The minor screamed as the horse ran away, and he came off the horse. The dad took off after him, and his horse stopped suddenly and tossed the dad from the horse. Meanwhile, while the group waited, another horse threw one of the minor riders off his horse. When the group met back up together, the trail operator offered to continue. The mom demanded that the ride terminate and that everyone return to the barn.
The operator nonetheless offered the two college girls to continue. They refused. The operator told the girls to head back to the barn on a more direct path. Hailey’s friend turned her horse to go back to the barn as directed, and she said, “Walk.”The horse took off.
When Alexis’ horse took off, Hailey’s horse took off. Hailey held on desperately to the mane of the horse. As the horse raced towards the barn, Hailey’s saddle slipped to the left and her foot came out of the stirrup. The horse eventually slowed down and when it did, Hailey attempted to put her foot back in the stirrup. When she did this, the horse took off again and she couldn’t hold on this time. She came off the horse, struck her head on the ground, and she suffered a traumatic brain injury.
As a result of her brain injury, Hailey suffers from debilitating migraines, severe depression and anxiety, and cognitive deficiencies that forced her to drop out of school.
The case dealt with the following issues:
- The applicability of the Farm Animal Activity Act, which is an immunity statute. The FAAA precludes liability against farm animal “persons” unless it falls under very narrow exceptions. Despite the FAAA being enacted in 1996, this was the first case in Kentucky to reach a jury. The reason is because it is very difficult to get past summary judgment. In this case, there were two MSJs filed. The first one was denied early and essentially found factual questions with respect to each exception to the FAAA’s immunity statute. After numerous depositions, the defense filed another MSJ. The judge denied it but only kept alive two of the exceptions (re: faulty equipment and matching riders to horses). Our liability instruction was extremely narrow, and the instruction did not include an ordinary negligence instruction.
- The FAAA has a specific definition of “inherent risks” of farm animals including horses taking off and other similar issues that farm animal operators do not have a duty to eliminate. Of course, the defense harped on this over and over.
- We were in a very conservative, wealthy rural county just outside of Louisville. It is horse country, and we were suing a horse farm. The highest verdict in this jurisdiction prior to ours was $1.2 million several years before.
- There is a specific comparative negligence definition in the FAAA that requires riders to act “safely and responsibly” to the best of their ability. That issue was tried too on Hailey’s liability. The jury found Hailey complied with her duties and placed zero liability on her.
- We decided not to call the defendant in our case because we knew it would be a wrestling match. Instead, we played clips of his deposition to our expert and had the expert comment.
- The decision not to call the defendant played very well because some huge factual inconsistencies came to light at trial, and it was clear the defendant had lied about a critical fact in his deposition. Because of this, the defense ended up not calling the defendant or his girlfriend (witness) either. This was an interesting twist. Jury was horrified by that, for good reason.
- There were some important evidentiary issues. The defendant did not have my client sign a waiver. The judge kept out the actual waiver/language, but testimony came in by us that the defendant failed to have Hailey sign one. We think this played well in the conservative jurisdiction – I think the jury thought he was careless and didn’t protect himself. Legally speaking, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
- There was also a lot of testimony that the defendant had told the group he had put bourbon in his coffee that morning to warm up, and that he drank a swig of bourbon with one of the adult riders before the ride. There was no evidence he was drunk. We believed there to be a nexus between alcohol and his failures because he was distracted, not focusing on safety, and not creating a climate and culture of safety. The judge kept it out under 403 essentially. We think he was wrong, but it made the trial less objectionable.
- We had a very lovely client and had excellent damages witnesses. That said, our client lived a seemingly normal life. Since her injury, she met her husband, got married, and maintained a job.
