Exam I
Test your knowledge of equine law. by Attorney Krysia Nelson
The Dead-Beat Boarder
t’s an age-old question: when a horse owner stops paying their board bill, what level of care must the stable continue to provide? A court in Minnesota answered that question: no more than what the boarding contract requires. A woman dropped her two mares at a farm
where the written boarding agreement stipulated that the farm would provide only “basic” pasture board, with the owner providing all care, grain and supplements. The contract provided that farm employees would “help out” if an owner couldn’t make it out to the farm, but there would be additional charges whenever that occurred. The woman then went off to Alaska, not to be heard from again. The woman didn’t pay the farm at all for more than six months, at which time the farm asserted a lien on the horses. The matter ended up in court when the farm refused to release the lien even af- ter the woman made a partial payment. Of course, both horses had “special needs,” and the farm had incurred significant expense in providing extra veterinary care and other ser- vices. The dispute over the amount owed arose because the woman refused to pay more than the basic board charges she had agreed to, and because upon her return from Alaska she found her horses in what she considered to be poor physical condition. The court placed the blame for the horses’ con- dition squarely at the owner’s feet: the contract required the owner to do all the care and instead she went to Alaska; the contract required the farm to provide the horses hay and water, which it did. The court awarded the farm what it claimed to be owed, finding the failure to provide additional feed and care was not required of the farm under the contract. The case illustrates a common problem for boarding stables. Sadly, it is not unusual for own-
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ers to abandon their horses and simply vanish from the scene: unreachable by the stable and de- linquent on paying charges due. The farm in the case above was fortunate that
the owner of the horses didn’t disappear com- pletely and hopefully the farm was able to col- lect on the judgment awarded by the court. The more common nightmare is that the dead-beat boarder cannot be found or is judg- ment proof (i.e., doesn’t have assets sufficient to satisfy the judgment and pay the stable the amount ordered by the court). How can a boarding stable best protect itself from the
dead-beat, horse-abandoning, boarder? I recom- mend the following: The boarding contract should include a vet-
erinary power of attorney authorizing the board- ing stable to secure not only veterinary care for the horse, but also authorizing euthanasia. Couple these authorizations with a requirement that each boarder keep a credit card on file with the stable’s regular veterinarian. An “abandonment” clause. In the contracts I
draft, this clause looks something like this: Boarder agrees that for the purposes of this
Agreement, “abandonment” of the Horse shall occur upon any of the following events: (a) Boarder’s failure to pay STABLES any sums due it pursuant to this Agreement within 90 (nine- ty) days of the date of a STABLES bill demand- ing payment for same, or; (b) Boarder’s failure to notify STABLES of any change of address or emergency contact information, and STABLES’s subsequent inability to contact Boarder for a pe- riod of more than 90 (ninety) days for any reason whatsoever, or; (3) Boarder’s failure to remove the Horse from STABLES’s premises within 60 (sixty) days after the termination of this Agree- ment by written notice. It is the intent of the par-
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