Peoples thoughts on this?

[LadySam]

... I thought I could get a small adult or maybe teenager who might like to do some competing and who might me a more aesthetically pleasing size for her. But this has put me right off!

But isn't that quite a different situation? The fact the girl was a 14yo child under the supervision of an adult was basically the cornerstone of the judgement, I thought. An adult or teenager over 16 who is capable of understanding the risks involved - especially if you inform them of what they are - would be pretty much the opposite of the situation of the poor pair in the court case.

 

[ycbm]

But isn't that quite a different situation? The fact the girl was a 14yo child under the supervision of an adult was basically the cornerstone of the judgement, I thought. An adult or teenager over 16 who is capable of understanding the risks involved - especially if you inform them of what they are - would be pretty much the opposite of the situation of the poor pair in the court case.

Unfortunately, that won't stop a no win no fee lawyer from trying their luck. And although they should not win it would be incredibly stressful.

I'm seriously questioning whether to let my friend who has been riding my cob on him again. In theory, he's much easier than her own horse, but what if he just freaks out one day for no known reason? I'm certainly never going to let a child ride a horse of mine ever again.

This has rattled a lot of us, hasn't it?

 

[ycbm]

yes, our house policy is NFU and it does have public liab, I have read the BHS thing which says it is insurance of last resort. Is or are both of these enough based on what seems could be a massive financial risk if anything goes wrong?

Paddy what that means is that the BHS would expect you to use your house insurance first and them only if that is insufficient. You are covered, I believe.

 

[Cinnamontoast]

So what will all the RS do? There are loads of under 16 girls 'working' at my yard and they ride often. One was dumped on a hack, broke her collar bone, one was dumped on the yard, fortunately didn't hurt herself. There have been loads of incidents.

How about if a friend asks you to do chores and something happens like it did to me? Is everyone going to refuse to help friends now? The worst injury I've seen was the sister of my OH's colleague, got both barrels to her forehead turning out, skull cracked all the way round. It's changed her personality, taken years to heal, needed bone grafts, one failed.

In reality, I can't see much changing and I doubt many parents will read the case and then decide to sue too, surely? Maybe I'm being terribly naive, but I can't see the dozen little girls at the yard disappearing tomorrow, there'd be no-one left to turn out, tack up etc.

 

[teapot]

In relit you, I can't see much changing and I doubt many parents will read the case and then decide to sue too, surely? Maybe I'm being terribly naive, but I can't see the dozen little girls at the yard disappearing tomorrow, there'd be no-one left to turn out, tack up etc.

Depends on the riding school. My nearest big properly run one doesn't have gangs of teenage girls hanging off brooms, never has done, and never will.

Others, who are maybe more lax when it comes to H&S might start actually realising that a bunch of 13 year olds need supervising, and it's only by sheer luck they've never been sued. What is perhaps more worrying is parents not knowing just how unsupervised their kids are.

 

[be positive]

Unfortunately, that won't stop a no win no fee lawyer from trying their luck. And although they should not win it would be incredibly stressful.

I'm seriously questioning whether to let my friend who has been riding my cob on him again. In theory, he's much easier than her own horse, but what if he just freaks out one day for no known reason? I'm certainly never going to let a child ride a horse of mine ever again.

This has rattled a lot of us, hasn't it?

If he "freaked out" for no reason having never done anything like that before then you would not be consider negligent, the situation is very different to an inexperienced adult letting a child on a horse neither of them know well, if there is no negligence involved there is no case.
The case in the OP is different in that the owner had bought a cheap horse, had had it home for less than a week and may not even have ridden it herself during the time she owned it, we don't have all the finer points, it will have been assessed before the case was brought by an independent rider/ trainer who it seems described it as green, unresponsive and uneducated something that the novice owner could not assess for herself in order to make an informed choice as to whether a child could ride it in the field, you are an educated rider who can assess the situation and would not put a novice rider in a potentially dangerous situation or risk your horse by allowing it to be ridden by someone incompetent.

I think it will make us all think before we let people ride our horses but if we know the horse, the rider and their capabilities we should be able to remove negligence from the equation, if we know the horse is tricky and do not warn the rider or we let them go into an unknown situation then we may be guilty of neglect if the worst should happen.

 

[alwaysbroke]

Feel for all involved with the case, but has also made me wonder how it will effect buying and selling of ponies/horses for children. Obviously some ponies are too small for an adult to ride, so a child has to get on to see if the pony is suitable.
Also an owner when you sell a horse you only have the purchasers word that they are competent, how do you assess that they are until they are actually on your horse?
worrying situation

 

[Pearlsasinger]

You have this girl falling off doing something she wanted to do and was happy to do and claiming compensation with her whole life ahead of her.

Then you get Freddy Tylicki who has a family and was doing a job, yes a job he loved and was very good at. Along with every precaution taken to ensure safety. He had come down in a race and is now paralysed from just below the shoulders. He wont be seeking compensation from the racetrack, horses owner, the other jockeys around him that came down with him. As hard as it may be for him he will accept that these things happen when riding horses, let alone going at 30+mph.

Presumably he has insurance, for just such an eventuality.

I have every sympathy with him but professional jockeys take the decision to race on horses in the full knowledge that it is a very dangerous activity.

 

[LadySam]

So what will all the RS do? There are loads of under 16 girls 'working' at my yard and they ride often...

For a start I guess insurance premiums might go up.

Do they not already sign waivers? At our RoR yard we have to sign a release acknowledging horses and riding is potentially dangerous, no horse is to be ridden unless under the direct supervision of a trainer, we promise to indemnify the Trust and not hold them responsible, etc, etc. If the person is under 18 it needs to be signed by the parents.

As ycbm said earlier, it might not stop a no win-no fee lawyer going after them, but it would have to make people think twice.

 

[be positive]

Feel for all involved with the case, but has also made me wonder how it will effect buying and selling of ponies/horses for children. Obviously some ponies are too small for an adult to ride, so a child has to get on to see if the pony is suitable.
Also an owner when you sell a horse you only have the purchasers word that they are competent, how do you assess that they are until they are actually on your horse?
worrying situation

I would not want to see a pony that was not shown ridden before the child was put on, ideally by the child that has outgrown it, if I turned up with a child and no one was available to ride I would be extremely cross.

Selling a horse is sometimes tricky as it can be hard to tell how experienced someone is before they get on but it is easy enough to stop the trial if they are not capable, you would suss them out to an extent so would not allow someone buying their first horse to come and view a horse you didn't consider suitable so they are unlikely to be way overhorsed however much they have stretched the truth, I have only ever stopped two viewings, one the woman was see sawing on the mouth and I would not let that continue, another he was more novicey that I expected but he was in no danger as the horse was basically safe just not going to put up with the rider long term. Other than that there have been people I would not have sold to but normally more due to their unrealistic ideas than because they would have come to any harm, I did recently have a lady turn up who didn't get on, not because the pony did anything wrong but because he was bigger than she expected, I sold one once even though the girl fell off during the trial, she felt that it was her fault and if that was the worst that could happen then she would be happy, she had been warned he might buck after a jump!!

 

[ester]

So what will all the RS do? There are loads of under 16 girls 'working' at my yard and they ride often. One was dumped on a hack, broke her collar bone, one was dumped on the yard, fortunately didn't hurt herself. There have been loads of incidents.

How about if a friend asks you to do chores and something happens like it did to me? Is everyone going to refuse to help friends now? The worst injury I've seen was the sister of my OH's colleague, got both barrels to her forehead turning out, skull cracked all the way round. It's changed her personality, taken years to heal, needed bone grafts, one failed.

In reality, I can't see much changing and I doubt many parents will read the case and then decide to sue too, surely? Maybe I'm being terribly naive, but I can't see the dozen little girls at the yard disappearing tomorrow, there'd be no-one left to turn out, tack up etc.

Well they hopefully will have insurance the same as they do now! And risk assessments and accident books etc etc...


LadySam many places do have waivers, however I have always been told that in the event of negligence they mean nothing. Professional establishments are not able to negate their responsibilities onto the client.

 

[HashRouge]

If he "freaked out" for no reason having never done anything like that before then you would not be consider negligent, the situation is very different to an inexperienced adult letting a child on a horse neither of them know well, if there is no negligence involved there is no case.
The case in the OP is different in that the owner had bought a cheap horse, had had it home for less than a week and may not even have ridden it herself during the time she owned it, we don't have all the finer points, it will have been assessed before the case was brought by an independent rider/ trainer who it seems described it as green, unresponsive and uneducated something that the novice owner could not assess for herself in order to make an informed choice as to whether a child could ride it in the field, you are an educated rider who can assess the situation and would not put a novice rider in a potentially dangerous situation or risk your horse by allowing it to be ridden by someone incompetent.

I think it will make us all think before we let people ride our horses but if we know the horse, the rider and their capabilities we should be able to remove negligence from the equation, if we know the horse is tricky and do not warn the rider or we let them go into an unknown situation then we may be guilty of neglect if the worst should happen.

I was going to post something very similar but you beat me to it! I think a lot of people are failing to pay proper attention to the finer points of the case, that the girl was *encouraged* to ride an unsuitable horse by an adult who should have known better, but didn't. Ignoring the assumptions made because of the horse's racing background, however irrelevant certain posters think that is, she is also described as "a green, unresponsive and uneducated horse". This is important. It sounds to me like the owner is being held responsible because, as the horse's owner, she ought to have known that it would not be safe to let a teenage girl ride her in an open field. The fact that she instead encouraged the girl to ride her is also important. If the mare had been well-schooled and safe as houses, and the fall had simply been a freak accident, then the outcome of the case would likely be very different.

 

[indiat]

I was going to post something very similar but you beat me to it! I think a lot of people are failing to pay proper attention to the finer points of the case, that the girl was *encouraged* to ride an unsuitable horse by an adult who should have known better, but didn't. Ignoring the assumptions made because of the horse's racing background, however irrelevant certain posters think that is, she is also described as "a green, unresponsive and uneducated horse". This is important. It sounds to me like the owner is being held responsible because, as the horse's owner, she ought to have known that it would not be safe to let a teenage girl ride her in an open field. The fact that she instead encouraged the girl to ride her is also important. If the mare had been well-schooled and safe as houses, and the fall had simply been a freak accident, then the outcome of the case would likely be very different.

Yes, I think the lesson here is more for adults who use children as crash test dummies! We used to be liveried at an RS and had lots of young girls working on the yard in return for rides. I was horrified to over hear a livery, a woman as old as I am, who said she was too scared to get on her new horse but she was going to get one of the novice children (a 10 year old) to ride it. My oldest daughter, at age 11, was asked by another adult to get up on a horse whose behaviour was downright dangerous. I over heard the request and this woman was basically telling my daughter it was her lucky day as she was going to get an extra ride! The lesson here is, if you, as an adult, are too scared to ride the animal, do not ask a child to do it. PAY to get a trainer in who will help you. Having said that, I have long ago banned children from getting up on my kid's ponies, even if it is just a walk around the paddock on a leading rein. It makes me sound mean, but it's not worth the risk. Children really do NOT understand the risks they are taking, even at 14. I can't help but notice that adults who have never sat on a horse never ask 'to have a go' but it is the first thing kids ask me when they visit. My own daughter was very shocked when I pointed at to her, age 12, that riding was a dangerous sport. "Really? What could happen?" She felt so confident in the saddle, had such implicit trust in her instructor and me (like the woman in the case, we were the adults who supported her and encouraged her) and probably with a child's sense of immortality, the potential dangers never crossed her mind. A 14 year-old is still a child and still needs the adults around them to exercise good judgement.

 

[sheep]

Children really do NOT understand the risks they are taking, even at 14. I can't help but notice that adults who have never sat on a horse never ask 'to have a go' but it is the first thing kids ask me when they visit. My own daughter was very shocked when I pointed at to her, age 12, that riding was a dangerous sport. "Really? What could happen?" She felt so confident in the saddle, had such implicit trust in her instructor and me (like the woman in the case, we were the adults who supported her and encouraged her) and probably with a child's sense of immortality, the potential dangers never crossed her mind. A 14 year-old is still a child and still needs the adults around them to exercise good judgement.

I agree with this completely. When I was 14 I would have hopped on any horse without a second thought. Many of them were probably not suitable for my level of riding at all - very green horses at an RS that had probably only been sat on a few times (if even). To me (and the other girls), that was our "reward" for doing chores (for free!) at the yard on a Saturday. Fair to say with hindsight that my judgement and perception of risk were not well developed, and I was a sensible, conscientious and fairly mature sort of child.

I think in this case that the adult was also a novice. They showed very poor judgement - even if the child was more "experienced" with horses, the adult should have shown more common sense. It is very sad for all involved.

Also important to mention that "winning" £3m compensation doesn't mean it lands straight into your bank account - as I understand it, the money is managed by solicitors and used to pay additional costs incurred in daily life. Sadly, even with government / NHS / local govt support, having a disability is very expensive.

Thought provoking for us all.