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The jury made an award of $2,617,023 to the Plaintiff. According to the verdict sheet, $2.5 million was awarded in damages and $117,000 in medical bills. The jury further found that since Williams was responsible for 10 percent negligent conduct leading to the injury, the award should be reduced accordingly, reducing the award to $2.36 million. If it is found that the plaintiff is also negligent a claim of contributory negligence can be made by the defense to further reduce damages. (Contributory negligence is conduct by a plaintiff which is below the standard to which the plaintiff is legally required to conform for his or her own protection and which is contributing cause of the harm to the plaintiff). A claim of contributory negligence is a defense attorney’s way of lowering the damages by making a claim that the plaintiff would not have been harmed or harmed to the extent that he or she would have had their actions not contributed to the damages which occurred.

Defendant had a million dollar policy with Lloyds of London. According to plaintiff’s attorneys, Ken Fulginiti and Tom Duffy, the plaintiffs were willing to settle for the policy limit but the defendant only offered 150 thousand dollars. Because Lloyds of London’s reluctance to allow defendant’s to settle for a reasonable amount, as urged by both the settlement master and the judge in the case, combined with the large jury verdict, the Work to Ride program could fle a Bad Faith Claim against their insurance company and might even assign the bad faith claim to the plaintiffs.

Often barns have summer programs during which less experienced riders get to enjoy hours of fun around horses. Those with such programs need to make sure that all of their instructors are aware that they should not have the program participants engage in activities they are not qualifed to do. Also it is a good idea not to have the participants work with or around horses that have not been selected specifcally for the program. Finally, make sure the insurance limits are suffcient to cover any accidents that may occur and determine whether your insurance agency has had a history of failing to make reasonable settlements when necessary.

My regular readers should note that most of my other articles are reviews of Appeals Court decisions and as such contain a lengthy review of the court’s legal decision. This article was only decided by a jury at the trial court level and as such only a verdict was issued. As a result there was no legal decision issued with the determination.

Plaintiff Pharaoh Williams (a minor) and his mother Callie Williams sued the nonproft organization Work to Ride, Inc. after Pharaoh Williams was kicked in the face by a 2 year old Thoroughbred. The kick occurred while Williams was helping an unpaid employee of the program, Shadaria Shuler, load the horse into a trailer. (Both parties stipulated/ legally agreed that even though Shuler was unpaid by the program, she could be considered an agent of the Defendant). Both the plaintiff and defense counsel submitted papers stating that Williams hit the horse in question with a stick on the hindquarters and the horse kicked him after being hit with the stick.

The main contention between the parties was whether or not Williams had been asked by Shuler to use the stick on the horse’s hindquarters in order to get the horse to go into the trailer. Defendant alleged that Williams hit the horse without any instruction from Shuler. Defendant even went so far as to allege that Shuler commanded Williams to not hit the horse. Shuler claimed that Williams then hit the horse a second time in direct defance of her command. Williams testifed that Shuler instructed him to use a stick on the horse’s hindquarters to attempt to get the young horse into the trailer.

Defense attempted to undercut the plaintiff’s case by using testimony from other students of the program who stated that Williams had behavior issues during his participation in the program, thus implying that it was likely that he had disobeyed Shuler while helping her load the horse. However, Shuler had credibility issues of her own. Specifcally, at trial Shuler testifed that Williams admitted at the emergency room that being kicked in the face was his fault. However, plaintiff’s counsel produced convincing evidence to the contrary. According to the medical records, Williams was never in the emergency room because he had been intubated in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and taken straight to surgery as soon as he arrived at the hospital.

Regardless of the facts or credibility of the witnesses, it was plaintiff’s counsel’s position that it does not matter whose version is believable “it goes back to the initial decision to load the young Thoroughbred onto a trailer without a plan; if Ms. Shuler had planned this out better then Pharaoh would never have been involved,” he stated, opening that a 12 year old child, particularly one with limited equine experience, should not have been

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