[RC] Liability and neighborhood lessons - Carol Suggs
I am getting in on this post late...was horse
camping at Montana D'Oro near Moro Bay this last week...awesome time!!!
Great weather, great trails. Weather was perfect, hardly any fog on the
coast which was unusual for this time of year.
Anyway... don't leave this stuff to
chance. Please check with an attorney and
your insurance company regarding liability when giving lessons or having folks
ride on your property or if you are boarding horses.
We have a cattle ranch and beleive it or not when
we were getting ranch liability insurance there was a couple of companies out
there that would not insure us if we used horses on our ranch...sounds odd
doesn't it?!
The policy that we currently has covers basic
liability, however it does not cover liability for us if someone is here getting
lessons or boarding their horse. (BTW we have State Farm).
That is a different type of policy. The horse business policies are
expensive and sometime have exclusions to what they will cover.
Most homeowners policies do not cover horse back
riding or horse related accidents and specifically if you are making money off
someone (IE lessons, boarding ect) I don't beleive that your homeowners
policy will cover liability in those instances. You need to have a
specific liability policy for horse business.
We do not do lessons here or board, but we often do
have folks come and ride and we have a liability release (basically a
hold harmless) that we ask people to sign. They say that a lot of times
these things won't really hold up in court, but I'd rather have one than not to
have one.
