Injured whilst receiving riding tuition? You may be entitled to compensation.....

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CharlesMax

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I was disgusted to find an advertisement on facebook this afternoon with the title as above. Surely riders must accept the risk they may be injured whilst riding??

I am just so sick of the compensation culture which is the cause of the demise of so many small busineses! I cannot keep count of the number of falls (some nasty ones!) I have had when having lessons. I would never dream of blaming an instructor if I got injured - its a high risk sport!

I am not sure why this ad angered me so much - am I being unreasonable?
 
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Trouble is we have gone health and safety mad. Its anyones fault but our own. I remember doing PC rallies jumping grids with no reins, and bareback, and again falling off at riding school we wouldn't have even contemplated compensation. We chose this high risk sport but sadly some people think about the money.
 
You're not alone - many riding schools have given up simply because of this compensation culture. A large equestrian centre near me called it a day when a young girl lost her balance and fell off (whilst being lead in an indoor school) during a lesson and sprained her wrist. Her irate non-horsey father threatened to sue the proprietors! The riding school horses and ponies were sold and the stables are now DIY.
 
Well then, why are they not protecting themselves? All it would take is for schools to get pupils to sign contracts and waiver stating that injuries caused are your own fault.
 
This makes me so mad! :mad:

This is the reason why so many smaller schools are having to close down!

When you want to learn to ride (or do anything with Horses infact) it doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out, that a Horse is a big strong animal with a flight response and is unpredictable. If you choose to be around them anyway and still end up in an accident, then thats something you will have to deal with!

Riding is a risky sport, I accept that I could have a fatal accident in the future, but that is a risk I am willing to take, because I have a big love and passion for Horses and would hate being without them!

The RS I used to work for, made every client (or parent if under 18) sign a contract to say if they were involved in an accident they are willing to take responsibility for it or their child.
 
CharlesMax said:
I was disgusted to find an advertisement on facebook this afternoon with the title as above. Surely riders must accept the risk they may be injured whilst riding??

I am just so sick of the compensation culture which is the cause of the demise of so many small busineses! I cannot keep count of the number of falls (some nasty ones!) I have had when having lessons. I would never dream of blaming an instructor if I got injured - its a high risk sport!

I am not sure why this ad angered me so much - am I being unreasonable?
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Haha, I was about to jump down your throat for the title.

Yes if there was negligence and the direction given was totally inappropriate or it was a riding horse that was never fit to school a novice there should be some come back and the person/place investigated.

However 99% of falls are down to pure accident or the riders fault... I don't know many people that haven't learnt to balance well because you don't bounce so well!!!

Pan
 
I know the owner of a garden center that sells pets and has a tractor and trailer etc (I know not RS but it's along the same lines) Someone walked between the tractor and trailer, tripped over and sued for hurting herself (anyone with common sense would know that you can trip over and hurt yourself and so wouldn't step over the connection bit!) but now they have to put signs everywhere and there is a sign at the tractor saying that if you step over this, you may fall over, therefore it's your own fault now, basically.

It's stupid! I know they could put a sign up or they could make them sign a contract (hassle) but it should be common sense really...
 
tallyho! said:
Well then, why are they not protecting themselves? All it would take is for schools to get pupils to sign contracts and waiver stating that injuries caused are your own fault.
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Surely there will still be legal costs involved if someone took action, even though you made clients sign contracts?? I am not sure....
 
I had that ad pop up, I removed it & then when prompted to give a reason why, the only one from the list that I felt fitted was "offensive"!!
 
Amy567 said:
I know the owner of a garden center that sells pets and has a tractor and trailer etc (I know not RS but it's along the same lines) Someone walked between the tractor and trailer, tripped over and sued for hurting herself (anyone with common sense would know that you can trip over and hurt yourself and so wouldn't step over the connection bit!) but now they have to put signs everywhere and there is a sign at the tractor saying that if you step over this, you may fall over, therefore it's your own fault now, basically.

It's stupid! I know they could put a sign up or they could make them sign a contract (hassle) but it should be common sense really...
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Ridiculous! We have a beautiful pond in our village ruined by a hideous sign saying 'deep water' . The water is 2ft deep!! It just grates me when I see things like this - what has happened to peoples' common sense!!?
 
Quite tragically, at a village pond near us, a boy and his grandmother fell in and drowned.... I don't think it's really their fault, and have no idea what they've done now.... Fence it I expect. My parents used to take me to that pond to feed the swans and geese, we were still going last summer! I was the same age as the young boy when I first went. I know there's now a reason for them to put the fence up etc. but it would really ruin such a beautiful pond :( and you wouldn't be able to properly feed all the birds there, it's a shame. Though I'm not blaming the people at all, just all a bit of a shame really :(
 
Tammytoo said:
You're not alone - many riding schools have given up simply because of this compensation culture. A large equestrian centre near me called it a day when a young girl lost her balance and fell off (whilst being lead in an indoor school) during a lesson and sprained her wrist. Her irate non-horsey father threatened to sue the proprietors! The riding school horses and ponies were sold and the stables are now DIY.
Click to expand...

Sorry but this doesn't add up. Any "large equestrinan centre" would presumably be BHS approved, and they wouldn't get approval without insurance.

That's why riding schools have insurance so that they don't have to pay out thousands if/when they get sued.

In my opinion any riding school that doesn't have insurance is asking for trouble.

Not that I am condonning the sue/compensation mentality, in fact I am totally against it, but accidents happen, often through nobody's fault and sometimes life changing, and that is what insurance is for.
 
Thought this was an ad, was ready to rant about ambulance chasing lawyers!

Disclaimers - You cannot disclaim liability for injury or death. I think people try to use them as evidence to reduce payouts, not sure how succesful this is.

Insurance - should be in place to cover any claims but depending on the number of claims and size of payouts, premiums may become too expensive and close the business.
 
Sometimes I wish people would just shut up, and move on. Get on a horse and accept that things won't always go your way :mad:
 
The problem is insurance is sky high to cover the fact even when you win, the claimant doesn't often have the money to pay back your court cost immediately, so the insurance still foot the bill in the short term.
I had a real fender bender crash 2 yrs ago, other driver admitted liability & her insurance paid up straightaway for the damage. Even now, i'm still hounded by vultures to assist with my personal physical damage, when there wasn't even a thought of anyone requiring medical treatment.
 
susie2193 said:
Sorry but this doesn't add up. Any "large equestrinan centre" would presumably be BHS approved, and they wouldn't get approval without insurance.

That's why riding schools have insurance so that they don't have to pay out thousands if/when they get sued.

In my opinion any riding school that doesn't have insurance is asking for trouble.

Not that I am condonning the sue/compensation mentality, in fact I am totally against it, but accidents happen, often through nobody's fault and sometimes life changing, and that is what insurance is for.
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Think about it a bit harder!!

Each time you make a claim on your insurance it goes up and there is always an excess to pay too...often several hundreds, which can hit a RS hard.. Insurance isn't free money.
 
littlelegs said:
The problem is insurance is sky high to cover the fact even when you win, the claimant doesn't often have the money to pay back your court cost immediately, so the insurance still foot the bill in the short term.
I had a real fender bender crash 2 yrs ago, other driver admitted liability & her insurance paid up straightaway for the damage. Even now, i'm still hounded by vultures to assist with my personal physical damage, when there wasn't even a thought of anyone requiring medical treatment.
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Talking of ambulance chasers, I got a call about a year ago at home saying I could get compensation for my accident. Couldn't even think what accident I'd had and told the bloke so - he asked if I was sure! Now, I know I have a terrible memory on occasion but couldn't think of any accident involving car, another person, nothing. A month or so later both my kids got texts in a similar vein (their mobiles are in my name), and I was forced to wrack my brain further. Eventually, it occurred to me that it could only have been from when I got bucked off and ended up in Casualty.

Two things sprang to mind:

a) Should I therefore sue the horse? Difficult as I no longer have him
b) These people must get access to A& E records - the only way they could have got my details. Can't think of anything else.

Anyone else had this experience?
 
Riding schools should all have insurance, i do agree that riding is a risk sport but in this culture of safety and litigation, all risk should be minimised, especially in a teaching environment but this does not mean no risk and that should be explained to the client.
Any riding school worth their salt is risk assessing each rider and matching them with a school horse with some kind of document trail, as well as risk assessing the structure content, and environment of the lesson, all to minimise risk to the client and show reasonable care has been taken to minimise the risk to the rider.
In the past this was done verbally with no real documentation, but anyone not using documentation of some sort to demonstrate risk assessing,is litigation waiting to happen
 
I reckon they route around somehow. My particular vultures always try & imply they're something to do with the other drivers car insurance. Accident was that minor if the paint spray colour for my car hadn't been available only at the dealers & therefore costly it would have been dealt with by ourselves.
 
I too got many phone calls from company's saying I could make a claim, though I couldn't think of the accident I supposedly had... I asked them what they thought it was, and they said that I had apparently broken my arm 5 years ago (never broken a bone in my body) so I asked them to take me off of their records.... I got another phone call from the same company, and again I asked them to take me off of their records, the third time I asked I also threw in making harassment charges against them... they got the jist then :D

It annoys me that I had to go so far as to threaten them with legal action for them to finally shut up, and I still have no idea how they got my details, unless it was from my car insurance company, which I don't allow to give my details to a third party... so I'm a bit stumped over that :/
 
I think the problem with disclaimers is that it isn't legally possible to sign away your rights under the law, and unfortunately too many people use disclaimers to get them out of trouble.

It's a ridiculous situation though. I remember my daughter wanting to do pony rides for her birthday parties a few years ago because we have a bridle path running down the middle of our road. I used my cob and her pony but I made certain that every single parent stayed with their child and all signed a disclaimer stating they were aware horses were unpredictable and they accepted full responsibility for any injury. We did these parties for 3 years without incident until I eventually felt that maybe our luck had held long enough not to risk it again. Sad really because all my daughter's class mates loved the parties and we liked doing them, but the thought of what might happen if my heavyweight 15.2 cob stepped on somebody or spooked was too much of a risk in the end. Funny thing was that despite all the screaming kids, balloons etc, both horses seemed to really enjoy all the fuss.
 
Would you make a claim if both the RS owner and the RI neglected to inform you that the horse they wanted you to ride had, in the last 2 weeks put 2 people in hospital and failed to mention that the horse would perform up to 4 fly bucks 3-4 strides after each jump? This was the reason the 2 other riders ended up in hospital. (Why put this horse into a jumping lesson??)

I stayed on for 3 of the fly bucks but fell off on the last one landing awkwardly on my neck. I didn't make a claim. The RS owner must have realised that the horse wasn't suitable in the RS as he was removed within days of my fall.

***I've no idea if it was actually fly bucking but each buck looked like this http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=fl...bnh=134&tbnw=179&ndsp=40&ved=1t:429,r:36,s:73
 
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I larfed at this when I read the first page.....because the person I would be multlplee sueing....would be me!!!! ;)

Bryndu
 
Taranana, I think those sorts of calls are generic, when I ask which accident they can't tell me ;) they just hope you will fill in the gaps.

As a rule I think most equestrians won't claim, even when they can (confirmed to me by BHS legal helpline advisor, who I think got a bit frustrated because nobody who called him would claim! :D)

I think its the newbies who must be a particular risk.
 
On the hole I agree but where my friend was involved in a accident on a riding school horse she is taking them to court and I don't blame her.
She's a experienced rider and has risen my horses and hunted them and she's not a novice in any way. Iv cut down the number off horses i own so she decided to go to a riding stable to have a weekly ride. She said she was experienced so they put her on a big tb which she said was rather naughty and she didn't enjoy riding him but had to get back to the yard. They went across a field and the horse bolted and bucked several times and she flew into a metal gate as the horse raced round the Corner still bucking.
She now has a broken arm and a fractured rib plus very colourful bruising.
She's losing a lot off wages due to this horse who shouldn't be in a riding school so I'm glade she's geting them for it and hope she wins.
 
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