At Equine Legal Solutions, we receive a lot of questions about what creates liability and how to protect against it. Liability comes in two basic forms ¨C civil and criminal. Criminal liability is created by a violation of law. In contrast, civil liability occurs when all three of the following criteria are met: (1) you owe someone else a duty AND (2) you breach that duty AND (3) that breach causes the other person harm.

When do you owe someone else a duty?

Many duties are defined by contract. If you run a boarding stable, your responsibilities toward your boarders are largely set forth in your boarding contract. Likewise, if you are a riding instructor, your agreement with your student (whether verbal or written) creates certain duties between you and the student. However, you also have other duties toward your clients that arise automatically because of your business relationship with them. For example, you must operate your business in accordance with industry standards, particularly for safety. Note that while you can delegate these duties, you cannot delegate the ultimate responsibility. If you hire employees or agents to perform all or part of your duties, you are generally responsible for their actions.

When have you breached a duty?

In general, if you have a duty toward someone else and you fail to perform the duty or perform it incorrectly or incompletely, you have breached that duty. Let's say that you operate a stallion station and a stallion owner hires you to collect their stallion and fulfill incoming orders for semen shipments. The stallion owner has a contract with the mare owners that sets out the terms of the breeding, and the stallion owner therefore has duties toward the mare owners. You have a contract with the stallion owner that sets out your responsibilities, so you have duties toward the stallion owner.

When has someone suffered damages?

Your breach of duty must cause actual harm. For example, if you own a training facility and your stall cleaner neglects to latch a horse's stall door and the horse escapes, your duty of care toward that client has just been breached. However, if the horse is caught and returned to his stall with no injury, your client has not suffered any damages as a result of the breach. On the other hand, if the horse escapes out onto the highway and is run over by a car, both the horse owner and the driver of the car have suffered harm as a result of your negligence. You owe a duty to the public at large to prevent animals from escaping your property (and in many states, this duty is written into law as well).