Rider hurt in fall from 'Ferrari' horse loses £30,000 action

For goodness sake these people MUST take some sort of responsibility for themselves!

you get on a horse and at one time you will fall off unless you are surgically sewn on to the horse!!!

I think riding schools will soon need to insist that people get their own personal accident and injury insurance before starting lessons and to sign a 50 page disclaimer that riding is a dangerous sport!
 
Sounds like a sensible finding. One thing that confused me was that she said she was about to canter and had asked the horse to slow down and then next thing she remembered she was on the floor but then claimed that the horse bolted with her and stopped suddenly
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I think riding schools will soon need to insist that people get their own personal accident and injury insurance before starting lessons and to sign a 50 page disclaimer that riding is a dangerous sport!

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Neither of which would prevent a negligence claim...
 
Honestly, if she felt overhorsed, why didn't she get off and ask for a different one? I freely admit to have doing that after losing my confidence after a nasty fall. A few weeks later I felt confident enough to get back onto the original horse.
 
Sensible judgment. How can anyone expect to ride and NOT fall off sometimes? OK, you're unlucky if you get injured, but it's nobody's fault. I do agree that anyone using a riding school horse and feeling very unhappy with him/her should say so. Also, if asked to do something one really doesn't feel up to doing, say so. A good instructor will help, change horse, etc. After all, it's only taking responsibility for your own well-being.
 
in the newspaper article there was one interesting 'comment' along the lines of "I don't want to be sued but the horse concerned should never have been in that lesson. " Person knew the horse

Agree the court decision is a victory for common sense but there may be an underlying story. Why was a rider that cannot canter on an 'Intermediate' lesson ?

to me 'intermediate' means someone who can walk, trot, canter and jump a small X pole on a sensible horse

someone who cannot yet canter and has only ridden one patent safety 'volvo' horse is NOT 'intermediate'

I hate the compensation culture but reading the newspaper article raised some questions in my head.
 
As much as falling off isn't nice I think you know the risks before you get on. You can ride a pony that is a known b*gger and be fine, then fall off your own trusted mount doing something simple.

If she really was a horse lover she'd accept it as one of those things rather than suing them IMHO
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I have some involvement with a riding school, and you'd be amazed at the number of people who push themselves into groups with a higher ability. I suppose I see it more with parents pushing their kids. It's really hard sometimes to softly tell the parent that their child isn't ready for the next group yet, and for them to argue with you about progress etc. I always pass the buck and refer them to talk to the instructor, who can do the job of telling them. Problem is, if they absolutely insist and the person goes into the higher group, it then slows that group down as they have a lower ability student in the group who can't keep up.

Sounds like, she had been moved into an "intermediate" group, when she was clearly more novice than that. Somebody who can't yet canter is not classed as intermediate.

Interesting though, but I'm glad that she failed. I think we are becoming too much of a blame culture these days.
 
How many riding school riders actually know how good (or not) they really are? IME they all think they can ride. From one hour's group lesson a week for two years - not a chance!

A child came to me having supposedly ridden most Saturdays for SEVEN years - and she had no seat in canter, had no idea of contact (how or why) diagonals in trot, changes of rein or the two-point seat. And when she gave our pony and aid and it carried it out she nearly fell off. This from a well known and very reputable riding school I would recommend to anyone.

With very few exceptions most are deluded passengers.

I think they should all be told

You WILL fall off - A LOT. It WILL hurt - A LOT. If you still wish to proceed with riding at this establishment BE IT ON YOUR OWN HEAD. If not, please go away. We cannot be held responsible for your ability or misguided beliefs about it.

That way, they are going in with their eyes open.

My riding school would have no clients, would it
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Actually, the child above recently came third and fourth in her very first jumping competitions on our 'proper' pony (no plod) with riding I was proud to put my name to. Notwithstanding big confidence issues and a large audience, she rode like a pro - lovely secure seat, kind hands and brilliant lines to every fence.

It took six months of private tuition at least three times a week and lots of playing about in between to get to this standard. And yes, she did fall off lots during this time.
 
She should have bloody well said something then if she felt the horse was too much of a "ferrari" for her. If I was offered to drive a super duper fast expensive car then Id probably say no because Id be very worried Id damage it!

Im surprised that people aren't made to sign disclaimers already???
 
the point I was intrigued with was that she'd ridden at this school for a number of years; they knew she couldn't canter; they always put her on the same 'volvo' horse; the horse was lame so she couldn't ride it; instead of telling her she was "incompetent to ride other available horses" they put her on 'ferrari' horse. If instead they'd told her that they didn't have anything availablr for her at that time/date and that she'd have to change her time/date to when they had a more 'ploddy' mount instead of keeping her booking and taking her fee.

I think what I'm getting at is that if she'd worded her complaint differently then I think from the information in the newspaper article, that she'd have won her compensation....!!!

I still hate the compensation culture but I don't think that this ruling sets any wonderful legal precedent - which is what we are all looking for - a precedent that sets a commonsense attitude to taking part in risk sports.
 
There is a glaring inconsistency here, so what else was there that we do not know.
She asked him to trot, next thing she knew she was being picked up off the ground YET she says he bolted, stopped suddenly and catapaulted her. Which was it then?

I think it is a very good outcome, but will have little effect on the outcome of any other cases.
 
TBH, I think we were lucky to have a sound judge, who obviously had some horse sense, as I wouldn't be surprised by another judge finding in her favour.
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We mustn’t forget what this case was about...

Extracts from the Judgement:

“The nub of the pursuer's case was that she should not have been given the horse in question for the lesson she was attending on the day of the accident.”

“It is important to identify exactly what the pursuer's case is and what it is not. Despite some discussion of the subject, the pursuer does not attack the decision to put her into level 3 on 2 April. Rather her criticism is levelled at the choice of horse made for her on that date. Her case is that the horse was unsuitable for someone moving from level 2 to level 3.”

“In all the circumstances I am satisfied that the decision to place the pursuer on Suchard on 2 April was a reasonable one. I shall accordingly grant decree of absolvitor.”
 
I started riding as a small child in 1963. We rode, we fell off, we got back on again. We sometimes hurt ourselves, but, hey, we chose to get on in the first place! All those years on, my daughter and I are heavily into horses and appreciate that even the quietest of horses can through a "wobbly" - IT HAPPENS!! This "Nanny State" thing is getting ridiculous - why can't people just fall off and accept that falling off is part of riding, for God's sake! But then again, if anyone make's such a foolish claim, are they ever likely to be true "riders" in any event????
 
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How many riding school riders actually know how good (or not) they really are? IME they all think they can ride. From one hour's group lesson a week for two years - not a chance!

A child came to me having supposedly ridden most Saturdays for SEVEN years - and she had no seat in canter, had no idea of contact (how or why) diagonals in trot, changes of rein or the two-point seat. And when she gave our pony and aid and it carried it out she nearly fell off. This from a well known and very reputable riding school I would recommend to anyone.


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just to back up on this, i have ridden at ridden schools for the last 8 years and until this year when i changed riding school again i THOUGHT i was a pretty good rider. they have a simulator which showed up precisely what you have mentioned above, that actually my seat in canter was awful! any "proper" forward going horse would only have to stumble and have me off (i hasten to add at this point i have ridden my neighbours tb mare and had the odd fall off of her!) however the rest you mention i have known for the last 6ish years. except the 2 point seat?! could you explain this for me?


anyway back to topic, last year whilst at previous riding school, i had a total of 22 falls in the space of 10 weeks, 2 resulted in a landing on my neck/shoulder (until this point and fall 13 i had never worn a body protector there at all or jumping they then insisted on it) because my instructor was pushing me past bounderies i felt comfortable, on horses i wasnt comfortable riding. butme or my mum NEVER considered suing as i accept that if i ride, i will fall off, i WILL get hurt.
 
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A child came to me having supposedly ridden most Saturdays for SEVEN years - and she had no seat in canter, had no idea of contact (how or why) diagonals in trot, changes of rein or the two-point seat. And when she gave our pony and aid and it carried it out she nearly fell off. This from a well known and very reputable riding school I would recommend to anyone.

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Yet I 'treated' my home taught (by her qualified mother) daughter to a riding school lesson at a very reputable place, where she was sneered at for not knowing how to be a riding school kid (no, she's not great on diagonals, actually, as she has Aspergers, which I explained to you about, and does not actually do a lot of school work. That's why we're here, dear. But she does ride out a lot, and can stay on something that bucks, and rears, and does all her own mucking out, and handling...) she then fell of because the pony spooked (that was a fluke, I admit) the instructor stage whispered to her cronies 'she's rubbish get her a beginners pony' and her first aid skills were so crap that she continued to take the p*ss out of my daughter for the ensuing 15 minutes while she rode on a leg that had been trodden on and later required medical treatment.
I still hear this instructor's name praised hither and yon, and frankly, I wouldn't pay her to teach a rabbit to do what rabbits do best. She made me ashamed to have the letters BHSAI after my name.
Totally irrelevant to this case, but being an accomplished riding school rider is only really useful if you only ever ride in a riding school. Not much use if you don't.
 
Good on the judge.
I reacently took a horrific fall from a young horse i was riding. the horse wasnt mine and i was exercising him for his owner, he spooked and bolted, i ended up on a spinal board having had the horse apparently jump out of the school and sumersaulted onto the road (mum was watching, i dont remember it).
Luckily i didnt break my neck (that was the suspicion) but at no point did i think about suing the owner and neither did my mum. I put myself on that horse in that situation (which in hindsight wasnt a wise idea) and i took responsibility for the fall i had. I accepted the fact that horses are unpredictable and i am eventualy going to have a fall from them.
The lady owner very nicely replaced my hat for me but i wasnt expecting it from her and it was a very nice gesture.

Most reacently i got on a little pig of a pony that was far to much for its child rider. I was takeing her out for a hack when her pony realy started playing up, bucking and bouncing his front end. i swapped her onto my pony and got on this one, fully aware that it was being a pig and that i would in all likelyhood end up on the floor. now i didnt end up on the floor (not through want of trying on the ponies behalf) but even if i had, it was my decision as an adult to swap that kid off her pony and onto mine (who is dead from the neck up and looks after his little riders) and to get on this pony and teach it that it will not get away with that behavior, had i fallen it would have been my own fault and no one was making me get on that pony.

Ive taken some very nasty falls from the pony my mum bought me but im hardly going to sue her about it am I!

Its people like this woman that mean riding schools can no longer teach you how to ride properly. When i was a child and i rode at riding schools we didnt think twice about going down a jumping lane with no stirrups or reins (so you didnt use your reins for balance). Didnt think twice about going XC with no stirrups either. didnt think twice about doing an entire hour lesson without stirrups. now instructors are scared to do that sort of thing due to the compensation culture, and kids dont have as secure a seat as they used to. And to be completely honest i dont think its as much fun as it used to be. The red tape means that so many of the fun activities are banned because someone might take a fall.
 
I thought that the first rule in horse riding and the whole aim of horse riding is that you and the horse are one. That is what we all aim towards. So to begin your riding career suing others and not learning from your mistakes, is a bit odd to me. Yours Adrian
 
The whole suing thing is such problem these days - I blame too much American television!
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I've never been even close to a suit (thank god) but I have to admit I've seen both sides. On the one hand I used to run a very large riding school and I agree customers (which is the problem - they ARE paying for a service) can be absolutely unreasonable about their expectations and self-knowledge. I've had people SCREAM at me because they wanted to ride a horse I felt was too advanced for them. Fine, go die on someone else's time. If someone is paying for my opinion I'm going to give it, not to mention that I'm certainly not going to endanger anyone's safety - or my livelihood - just to satisfy someone's ego.

Then again, I've spent most of my life riding youngstock and retraining and I certainly have been endangered numerous times by other people's negligence. I've been chased by out of control dogs and kids on four wheelers, I've more than once had someone turn a weed whipper on against the arena wall when I was backing a horse, I've had someone turn a horse out in a ring I was riding in, I've had people flat out lie to me about a horse's problems, I've been given ill fitting tack, sent into unsafe conditions and had any amount of bad advice. Should I have "known better"? Often, yes - and I would now. But many times I've been unable to keep myself safe in the face of someone else's ignorance. I'm not saying I'd sue (although I've threatened it - usually by admiring the perpetrator's car and saying it will be mine if they don't smarten up) but I'm sorry, I don't consider such incidents "the cost of doing business."

As far as when I was a kid . . .well I grew up in a very "rough and ready" horsey area of the world and we certainly did lots of things that could have got us killed. In fact, in one case, i came very close to sustaining permanent injury. But you know people DID look after me. I got soundly lectured at Pony Club for showing up with a huge horse I couldn't ride one side of. A good horseman helped me find one more suitable when it became evident my mother and I didn't have a clue and had been ripped off. People taught me and looked after me, often only out the goodness of their hearts. The flip side was I had to listen to them or they simply prevented me from doing things.

And we have more people coming late to horse ownership. When I was young it was relatively rare for someone to START riding as a grown up but now it's relatively common. This makes it much harder to "control" new riders in a way that lessens the risk, not to mention that adults are just more likely to be hurt than kids. This has further changed to approach to teaching, making it much more "client friendly" than the often more "stern" approach common 20 years ago when most of us till got taught either by military men or people who had come up through that system. Personally I think the more "client friendly" approach has plusses and minusses but it certainly has made people much less tolerant of dictorial control.

Any maybe that's part of what's different now. You can't tell people "no" anymore because it's against their rights. People come on the internet (sorry but it's true) describing situations we all KNOW will end in disaster and we're not allowed to say, "You're in over your head. Get help," because that's insulting or unfair. In the "old days" you were expected to listen to your elders or betters but that's gone out of style. (I had a client tell me her goal was to gain my level of competance. . . riding her one easy horse three times a week. I pointed out I've ridden 4-10 horses a day and taught innumerable lessons in 25 years so perhaps that wasn't a reasonable expectation and in fact she only had to know a small portion but needed to know it well to be safe. She moved to someone whose story she liked better.) Now everyone expects to know everything right off the bat, regardless of the risks involved. People need experience AND education and they have to be patient. Leave bits out and the risks go up exponentially.

By the same token many people seem to feel it's reasonable to make other people responsible for their learning, rather than taking responsibility for it themselves. My usual piece of advice is that if someone is telling you exactly what you want to hear they are likely lying.

And horses have it better now - many of the old ways of learning had HUGE costs for horses and I, for one, am not sorry we are less tolerant of that now.

But anyway we live in the modern world now. We may not like it but it's true. And so establishments DO have to be careful or risk problems. The catch is that then those people who think they've had the "full" experience buy a horse, leave that structured environment, and can REALLY get in trouble. People who know more can't intervene without being accused of "butting in" . . . it really is a quandry.
 
That rather depends on the riding school. I have been to yards where their idea of progressive lessons are riding around the same arena week after week on the same 2 or 3 horses, with oh, wow, the odd trotting pole thrown in. However, I learnt to ride, and taught, at schools that demanded a bit more of its riders. We had a large XC course, that we used regulaly in lessons if the class were up to it, a large SJ field, which we also used a lot, as well as a large indoor school with a full set of jumps.

The horses we had may not have been ferraris (after all, how many people can get a really good ride out of a Ferrari) but they were certainly the Audis, and the BMWs not the ford cortinas. We bought and sold horses as part of our business, we had a selection of ex competition horses, who knew their thing, but were never going to achieve great things because they weren't quite fast/stylish/high enough jumpers, but they were certainly a class above many privately owned horses. We bought lots of youngsters, both from sales, and over from Ireland. The staff worked hard on those horses, we took them out to comps and hunting, and limited their lesson time to keep them interested. All the horses hacked out on a regular basis, all year round, to make sure they didn't get school sick, and several of them were hired out for hunting and competitions (until the insurance got ridiculous)

As instructors we worked on developing the riders - and making them into intelligent riders. It really scares me how many people class themselves as good riders at a riding school, and then cannot warm up a horse - they are so used to being spoon fed. All my clients knew how to warm up from the point where they happy in trot, and by the time they were happy jumping small courses, could comment intelligently on the horse, how it was going etc (a la BHS exams)

Many of my clients bought horses, and went on to have great fun - no, not everyone was winning rosettes etc, but the vast majority were having fun, and certainly being safe doing so! Our large livery yard was almost entirely made up of clients and ex clients, and we used to take lorry loads to shows, hunting, pub rides etc

In short, I guess what I am saying is don't lump all riding schools in together. We tried really hard to make sure there was a variety of horses, including the ones that pushed clients to ride better (be it lazy, a touch naughty, or just green) in a variety of situations - I know our intermediate-advanced adult lessons were beyond what a lot of private owners do.

On the flip side of the coin I have come across many one-horse owners who haven't had the advantage of riding a variety of horses, and they have a very difficult time sometimes getting a tune out of a different 'type' of horse - and it is why I think Pony Club is great - it's a shame there really isn't the same thing for adults.
 
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