Lobue v. Hanson, a case involving a wedding venue, a bridesmaid, a horse, and the Farm Animal Liability Act recently caught my attention.   [Read case here.] Background Todd Hanson owns a fifty-six acre property in Crosby, which he rents as a wedding venue called The Barn at Four Pines Ranch.  The weddings are held in a barn on the property.  Cattle and horses are on the property, but there is a fence separating the livestock from the barn. When the bride and groom arrived on their wedding day,… Read More →

A recent case out of the Waco Court of Appeals, James v. Young, is the real-life version of many landowners’ nightmare.  When a six-year-old child fell off of a horse the landowners allowed him to ride, his parents filed suit.  Did the Farm Animal Liability Act apply to shield the landowners from liability? Background The James family and the Young family were friends.  One weekend, the two families were spending time at the Young ranch.  The mothers and two of the children rode horses while several of the men… Read More →

In Part 1 of this series, I offered a detailed outline and explanation of the Texas Farm Animal Liability Act (“the Act”).  Today, we will review Texas appellate cases that have applied the Act to see how the statute plays out in real life.  As the Act is relatively new, originally passed in 1995, there are not a huge number of opinions analyzing this statute. Dodge v. Durdin, Johnson v. Smith, Young v. McKim The first group of cases we will consider are those analyzing whether the Act’s… Read More →