[RC] permission to ride on private property - Marlene Moss
I posted a while back about a road we ride on that goes
through private property which we used to have permission to ride on, but now
there are new owners and they aren’t giving permission. This cuts
out our “easy” loop, but we still had a road that goes up a nice
hill for conditioning (albeit a bit rocky and intimidating for some riders and
green horses). Now the owners along that road are trying to decide if
they want to let us continue riding their portion of the road. These are
private roads and their option is to fence and gate the access if they decide
to keep us out.
But the two primary people that we are talking to are open
to discussion and letting us continue as long as they feel we can find a way to
remove any chance of liability should one of us get bucked off and get hurt.
I told them we would try to write something up that we and
our boarders could sign removing any liability from them as property owners if
they let us keep riding through. This is really the only place we have to
ride without trailering so I would like to come up with something as completely
fair to them as possible. I don’t quite want to promise that no one
would go on the road without us “escorting” because we do have one
or two boarders that are more independent, but I will do that if it helps.
Can anyone give me verbiage from contracts or agreements they
have made with property owners for something like this? Is there any way
of guaranteeing that they couldn’t be held liable? Would it be better
or worse on the liability side if we made arrangements for a “leased”
trail and provided the property owners some compensation? Anything else I
need to be considering?
