Federal Equine Legislative Issues Other States Equine Legislative Issues Archived Equine Legislative Issues Humane Society Legislative Fund
2008 Score Card
MEC ASKS FOR MEMBER HELP IN AMENDING MISSOURI'S EQUINE LIABILITY ACT STATUTE The Missouri Equine Council is seeking the active assistance of its members statewide in an effort to amend Missouri's Equine Liability Act statute to strengthen its protections for equine professionals. Specifically, the amendment will seek to remove the "negligence exception" current in the statute. This issue is further explained below. If you are interested in working with the Council on this important objective, please contact the Missouri Equine Council. You will be contacted with further information as soon as the member volunteer information is compiled. In the meantime, equine professionals are still required to include the statutory warning language in their contracts and to post the warning signs currently provided by the MEC. The background of the Act and the current amendment efforts is as follows. In 1994, Missouri enacted the Equine Activity Liability Act, codified at RSMo §537.325 et. seq. The Act was intended to provide a level of statutory protection to equine professionals by making it more difficult to sue for personal injuries sustained from the "inherently dangerous" tendencies natural to horses; ie unpredictable behavior such as biting, kicking, rearing, stumbling, running, etc. Similar to many state statutes, the Missouri statute contained certain exceptions which provided that the equine professional would NOT be immune from liability in certain instances involving conduct which should be foreseeable and thus preventable by the professional. These exceptions provided that there would be NO IMMUNITY of the equine professional if it was proven they (paraphrased):
Exception 6 above is referred to as the "negligence exception". Most states having this exception have discovered that courts are reluctant to award immunity in any situation where its possible the equine professional did in fact "fail to use that degree of care" required in the statute. Whether the professional was in fact negligent is a question of fact for the jury, meaning the defense attorney cannot use a summary judgment motion to get the case thrown out early after its filing. In 2004, a Missouri Court of Appeals addressed both the statute and the effect of the negligence exception in the case of Frank v. Mathews, 136 S.W.3d 196 (W.D. 2004). Considering a summary judgment motion (ie the motion filed by the defendant requesting dismissal of the litigation on grounds of statutory immunity), the court held that the case could not be dismissed where it remained a question of fact for the jury as to whether a professional had negligently supplied and instructed a student on the use of a riding crop. This decision did not find the statute defective, nor did it find that the equine professional was liable. It merely said that the case had to go to a jury to make this determination! Unfortunately, so long as the negligence exception remains in the statute, it is likely that many of the cases brought under the statute will have the same result as the Frank v. Mathew decision. The Missouri Equine Council is now embarking on a state-wide grass roots attempt to have the statute amended to remove this negligence exception, thus strengthening the statute and returning it to its original purpose. Support Animal Agriculture and the Horse Industry! What YOU can do to help!
Petition to Representatives and President Obama >> Support Animal Agriculture - Oppose Criminalizing Horse Meat >> Note: Once someone has filled it out the Survey, it won't let you do so again from the same email address, but multiple people with different email addresses should be able to take it from the same computer. Thank you for your support of the equine industry!
|
Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:
|
