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At
Equine Legal Solutions, our boarding stable
clients often ask about parents dropping off
their children and leaving them for hours at a
time. As
one of our clients remarked with some
frustration, "I'm running a boarding
stable, not a daycare!"
What
is the risk of having unattended minors (e.g.,
persons under 18) at your facility?
The primary risk is that the child or
teen could be involved in an accident.
As a boarding stable owner, of course
you don't want anyone to get hurt, human or
equine. In
addition to that, you also don't want to get
sued. If
a child or teen is hurt in an accident, and
the parent isn't present, there's a risk that
the parent could bring a negligence claim.
The negligence claim would likely
allege that the stable was aware that the
child or teen was there alone, and therefore
the stable had a duty to supervise the child's
activities.
There's
also a secondary risk to having unattended
minors on the premises, which is that they can
cause someone else to have an accident.
Even the most innocent activities can
easily spook a horse, such as a rambunctious
game of tag or hide-and-go-seek.
Kids like to pet horses and feed them
treats, which can cause big problems if they
choose the wrong horses to pet and/or feed.
If kids don't have something to do,
they will find something to do, and what they
choose to do won't always be suitable for a
boarding stable environment.
Having
unattended minors on the premises can be bad
for business, too.
If a serious rider is in the arena, and
kids are out there playing around, it can be
really annoying to the rider who's trying to
accomplish something.
It's helpful to have an adult there to
intervene before the kids get too disruptive.
If the boarding stable staff are the ones who
have to play traffic cop, it takes them away
from their regular jobs, and it's also
frustrating for them.
What
if the child or teen is at the barn to take a
lesson? During
the lesson, the child will of course be under
the instructor's supervision.
But before and after the lesson, the
child will still be unsupervised unless a
parent is present.
And, accidents can easily occur on the
ground, such as during tacking and untacking.
For
these reasons, Equine Legal Solutions
recommends that boarding stables require that
persons under 18 be accompanied by a parent or
responsible adult.
In fact, it's one of the suggested barn
rules in the boarding contract that Equine
Legal Solutions offers as part of its Boarding
Stable Agreement forms package.
Additional
Information:
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