Legal and moral implications of friend being injured by fall off privately owned horse

bouncing_ball said:
If a friend had a life changing accident involving one of my horses and there were insurance and liability avenues I’d support that. Care and support for disability can be millions.
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If you were deliberately negligent yes, but we all the know the risks when we involve ourselves with these animals, so if you’re not prepared for the very high risk, don’t get involved, simple?‍♀️
 
No rider insurance would be enough to cover life changing injuries (adapted house, car, potentially 24 / 7 care) - the premiums would be prohibitive.

For anyone owning a horse - some third party cover is essential - IMHO - whether you let anyone ride them or not.

In law if criminals break into my yard and leave the gate open in the middle of the night so my horse gets on the road and causes a road accident which injures someone - I am liable personally. So even though the injured party has never been near my horse before and I left my horses secure the injured persons legal team will have a good go at getting cash out of me.

That is why the public liability insurance - BD, HH, BHS etc. is something like £20m because if you put a couple of people in a car into wheelchairs for the rest of their lives that's what it would cost.

I wouldn't own a horse without proper public liability cover.
 
There’s loads of case law that’s say riders assume the risk when they get on a horse .
However theirs also loads of things that can happen that make accidents complicated things .
Tack failure for example is an area where an accident could be judged to be the owners of the horses fault .
 
ycbm said:
And because it's not a given you will probably end up as key witness in court being ripped to shreds by the other insurance company's barrister. It's not as simple as "they had life changing injuries I'm happy for four them to claim on my insurance".
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yes I work in insurance I’m aware of that. It would depend on the case Etc.
 
I think there’s a difference between third party liability and rider personal injury insurance. Just because your policy includes third party, I don’t think that means another rider will be covered for personal injury. When they’re riding your horse with permission, they become the rider, not the third party. Most insurance policies have an option to include insurance - in the form of third party liability- for anyone riding your horse with your permission as long as it’s not for financial gain. This covers any damage to third parties while the other rider is in charge of your horse (and so, I’d say is important to have). It doesn’t cover the rider themselves for personal injury.

Personal rider insurance, likewise, will usually cover a rider to ride others’ horses for any third party liability, but not necessarily for any injury to themselves: they’d need extra personal injury insurance for that.

Don’t assume that because someone is insured to ride your horse (either on your policy or theirs), it includes injury cover for them: the chances are it won’t.
 
bouncing_ball said:
Seriously if you don’t have good personal liability cover, get some!
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I do have BHS Gold insurance. It is just that I both help exercise someone else's horse and a young girl rides my pony, and we are all just friends and no money changes hands (though I do occasionally get paid in cake ;)) . The whole post just made me think!
 
Fruitcake said:
I think there’s a difference between third party liability and rider personal injury insurance. Just because your policy includes third party, I don’t think that means another rider will be covered for personal injury. When they’re riding your horse with permission, they become the rider, not the third party. Most insurance policies have an option to include insurance - in the form of third party liability- for anyone riding your horse with your permission as long as it’s not for financial gain. This covers any damage to third parties while the other rider is in charge of your horse (and so, I’d say is important to have). It doesn’t cover the rider themselves for personal injury.
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I'm not a lawyer but I think if there is no money changing hands the rider is still a third party (they aren't employed or related to you). I think there are two well raised things to consider
1) legally the exposure to you as horse owner if someone (friend / rider / stranger) is injured by you and they choose (or are forced to by financial circumstances) to try and make a claim against you - I think the BHS / BD / HH/ some home insurance is what is key here.

2) the moral exposure you might feel is someone is injured by your horse and they can't work / have life changing injuries and they don't have insurance to cover this.
Full personal injury insurance for a dangerous sport to cover someone for life long support is prohibitively expensive and I suspect very rarely taken out by most people. You can suggest they take it out - but be prepared for them not to want to - until something happens to someone you know people struggle to see the risk that clearly.

I think I hope (maybe naively) that the injured friend would be able to make a claim on my third party liability BHS insurance - but I realise that if it would come down to insurance company negotiations and that might not get to the outcome we would both want.
 
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