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Many
boarding stables and other equine businesses require
customers and guests to sign
liability
release forms.
But we’ve all heard that “liability releases aren’t
worth the paper they’re written on.” Is that true?
Will those release forms actually protect the business
from liability?
How Do Liability Releases Work?
Liability
releases, also known as hold harmless agreements and
waivers, do two very important things:
Any
liability release can accomplish the first goal.
However, the more thorough a liability release is, the
more lawsuit deterrent value it has.
To achieve
the second goal, a liability release has to accomplish
two very specific tasks. First, it has to inform the
person signing the release form of the risks of the
activity they’re about to engage in. Second, the
liability release has to get the signer to agree to
accept those risks. When a liability release
accomplishes these two tasks, it provides the basis
for a legal defense known as assumption of the risk.
The More Specific, the Better
Because a
well-drafted liability release is intended to inform
about risks, it needs to be very specific. For
example,
Equine Legal
Solutions’ liability release forms
include specific provisions about the dangers involved
in trail riding, such as wild animals spooking horses.
A poorly drafted liability releases will make only
generic statements like, “Horseback riding is
dangerous,” without saying
why
it’s dangerous. The idea is for the release to cover
all the typical risks of the activity. For that
reason, a well-drafted liability release is often much
longer than a poorly-drafted liability release.
The Right Parties Must be Released
A
well-drafted liability release includes the universe
of people and entities who could be sued. For example,
a boarding stable release should include not only the
stable itself, but also its owners, employees and
independent contractors. If the stable doesn’t own the
property where it operates, the release form should
also include the property owners. Note that the
parties to be released can be listed as a category,
like “employees,” rather than listing each person
individually by name. In fact, listing the parties to
be released by category is safer. That way, if the
members of the category change, the new members of the
category are automatically covered by the existing
release. For example, if a boarding stable hires new
employees, its existing liability release form will
cover the new employees as long as the boarding
stable’s employees are listed as a released party.
The Right Parties Must Sign
Because the
person signing a liability release form can only sign
away their own rights, each person who might sue you
needs to sign a liability release. For example, a
boarder can’t sign away their family members’ and
guests’ legal rights. So, each family member and guest
who visits the boarding facility would need to sign a
separate release.
Children
(minors, persons under 18 years of age) can’t sign
away their legal rights. Period. So having a child
sign a liability release does absolutely no good. For
that reason, one-size-fits-all liability releases
simply don’t work. When you have a person under 18
participating in a horse activity, you need a release
designed for the parent or guardian of that
participant to sign, stating that they accept the
risks of what the child is about to do. Because having
a parent or guardian sign a liability release only
waives that person’s rights to sue, not the other
parents’ or guardian’s rights’, you would be wise to
have a liability release that includes an
indemnification provision. In a well-drafted
indemnification provision, the person signing the
release agrees that if anyone else sues you, the
signer will pay for your legal defense.
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