In the first case, the plaintiff (Dilley) had been injured during a trail ride when the horse Dilley was riding interacted with another horse,\u00a0reared and threw her.\u00a0\u00a0 Dilley, an adult in her sixties,\u00a0had no horseback-riding experience and had been provided by the trail company with its most docile horse, an animal that it usually made available to children.\u00a0\u00a0 Affirming the summary judgment issued against Dilley by the court below, the Seventh Circuit\u00a0held that Dilley’s personal injury claims fell squarely within the\u00a0scope of\u00a0Wisconsin’s equine immunity statute, which broadly immunizes\u00a0from civil liability a person’s<\/p>\n
“acts or omissions related to his or her participation in equine activities if a person participating in the equine activity is injured or killed as the result of an inherent risk of equine activities.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Wis. Stat. \u00a7 895.481(2).\u00a0\u00a0 While Dilley argued that the defendant’s alleged negligence was avoidable and therefore not an inherent risk of horseback riding, the court disagreed:\u00a0 “the statute’s enumeration of immunized\u00a0risks includes the ‘potential for a person participating in an equine activity to act in a negligent manner.'”\u00a0 Slip op. at 7.<\/p>\n
Nor was the court persuaded that any of the statutory exceptions to equine immunity applied:<\/p>\n
\u2666\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While immunity does not apply where the provider of the horse fails to make “a reasonable effort” to determine the ability of the rider to safely ride or to safely manage the horse provided, Wis. Stat. \u00a7 895.481(3)(b), there was no dispute “that [defendants] asked Dilley about her experience, learned that she had none, and accordingly paired her with Blue, the most docile horse in their stable and the one usually assigned to small children.”\u00a0 Slip op. at 10.<\/p>\n
\u2666\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While immunity does not cover a “willful or wanton” disregard for personal safety, Wis. Stat. \u00a7 895.481(3)(d), “[n]othing in the record supports a finding that [defendants] were aware (or should have been aware) of a ‘strong probability’ that Dilley would be harmed.”\u00a0 Slip op. at 12.<\/p>\n
\u2666\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While immunity does not apply when the injury stems from equipment or tack that the operator who provided it knew or should have known was faulty, Wis. Stat. \u00a7 895.481(3)(a), Dilley’s only complaint\u00a0was that “no one adjusted her stirrups,” not that “her stirrups — or any other equipment or tack — were defective in any way.”\u00a0 Slip op. at 12.<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0second case,\u00a0the plaintiff (Brown), whose case was dismissed on the pleadings, was injured in a collision with another horse during a riding lesson conducted by the defendant stable owner.\u00a0 Brown brought her own horse and rode him during the lesson.\u00a0\u00a0 Brown argued that her case fit with in the section 895.481(3)(b)\u00a0immunity exception for a defendant’s failure to safely manage the horse provided because the defendant had control over the other horse that had caused the collision.\u00a0 The court rejected this argument because\u00a0the defendant did not provide plaintiff with a horse:\u00a0\u00a0“A horseback-riding student who brings his own horse for a lesson supplies the horse; the instructor does not.”\u00a0 Slip op. at 13.\u00a0 Brown in fact “pleaded herself out of the exception” by affirmatively pleading in her complaint that she “provided her own horse to be used in the private lesson.”\u00a0 Id<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by John M. Simpson. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh\u00a0Circuit recently decided\u00a0two consolidated appeals affirming the rejection\u00a0of\u00a0personal\u00a0injury claims\u00a0by two individuals injured while riding horseback in Wisconsin.\u00a0 Both plaintiff’s claims were\u00a0barred by the Wisconsin “equine immunity” statute.\u00a0 Wis. Stat. \u00a7 895.481(2).\u00a0 Dilley v. Holiday Acres Properties, Inc., Nos. 17-2485 & 17-2970 (7th Cir. Sept. … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Seventh Circuit Rejects Horseback-Riding Injury Claims on Equine Immunity Grounds”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,167,96,166,5],"ppma_author":[697],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-animal-law","tag-equine-immunity","tag-horse","tag-horseback-ridiing","tag-john-simpson"],"authors":[{"term_id":697,"user_id":317,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jmsimpson","display_name":"John M. Simpson","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2018\/06\/simpsonjohn-125x150.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}