Source: https://horseauthority.co/lisa-deutsch-plaintiff-and-appellant-v-traditional-equitation-school-et-al-defendants-and-respondents/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 05:40:05+00:00

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Home > Equine Court > Civil Cases > LISA DEUTSCH, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. TRADITIONAL EQUITATION SCHOOL et al., Defendants and Respondents.
LISA DEUTSCH, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. TRADITIONAL EQUITATION SCHOOL et al., Defendants and Respondents.
Plaintiff Lisa Deutsch appeals from the judgment entered in favor of defendants Traditional Equitation School (TES) and Patricia Kinnaman, TES’s owner, following the trial court’s grant of defendants’ summary judgment motion.
Plaintiff filed the present negligence action against defendants on July 19, 2006. The operative complaint alleges that plaintiff was a beginning equestrian student at TES in September 2004. TES assigned plaintiff a horse that “had a temperament and reputation for skittishness[,] particularly when ridden by inexperienced, beginning students,” but plaintiff was neither advised of the horse’s temperament nor properly taught how to control him. On September 2, 2004, plaintiff was thrown from the horse and suffered severe and disabling injuries.
Defendants moved for summary judgment on May 4, 2007. The motion asserted that defendants were entitled to judgment as a matter of law because: (1) plaintiff’s sole cause of action for negligence was barred by the doctrine of primary assumption of risk; and (2) plaintiff had signed a release of “`all claims, demands, actions or causes of action of any kind or character whatsoever'” against TES. Plaintiff opposed the motion, asserting that triable issues of material fact precluded summary judgment on both grounds.
The undisputed evidence submitted by the parties established as follows. Plaintiff enrolled in riding lessons at TES in early 2004. Before her first lesson, plaintiff took a “tack course” at TES where she was taught “to brush and clean a horse and put [on] the saddle and related tack.” She also was evaluated by TES instructors to determine her proficiency on a horse. As part of the evaluation, plaintiff was asked to mount the horse and to “[w]alk and trot and stop and start.” She was able to do each of these tasks: She moved the horse into a trot by kicking the horse’s side with her heels, and she stopped the horse by pulling back on its reins. TES rated plaintiff a “beginner” based on its evaluation of her skills.
Plaintiff’s first and second lessons were taught by Cody Tavern (Cody). During her first lesson, Cody taught plaintiff to signal the horse to walk or trot by “squeez[ing] the horse’s body with [her] thighs.” Plaintiff does not recall that Cody taught her how to stop the horse during that lesson.
Plaintiff was assigned a horse named “Utah” to ride during her second lesson. She tacked the horse and then led it to the parking lot. There, Cody “admonished [plaintiff] for [her] poor tacking and he pulled on that cinch thing so tight [she] couldn’t believe it. . . . [He] [s]eemed to re-adjust everything . . . and gave [Utah] a good yank.” Plaintiff and Cody then lead Utah into the riding ring and Cody helped plaintiff onto the horse.
At Cody’s direction, plaintiff walked Utah in a circle around the ring. Cody then directed plaintiff “to go up to a trot.” Plaintiff attempted to do so either by “trying that squeezing thing with my thighs that he taught me in the previous lesson or I might have kicked her.” Utah did not begin to trot but, instead, “took off like a bat out of hell.” Plaintiff recalled as follows: “I guess she made the same circle that we were making in the walk. Some reason she turned around, I don’t know why, and she started just running like crazy right at Cody or Cody jumped in front of her. I’m not sure but we were running straight for him and the bleachers and we were flying.” Cody attempted to stop the horse by lifting his hands up in “this stop motion, two palms facing out way high up in the air.” Then, as the horse approached him, “the horse turn[ed] left and [plaintiff] fl[ew] right” and fell to the ground.
The undisputed evidence is that prior to plaintiff’s accident, Utah had never bolted when ridden by a student or an instructor at TES.
The court entered judgment on August 16, 2007, and notice of entry of judgment was served on August 21, 2007. Plaintiff filed this timely appeal from the judgment on October 17, 2007.
In determining whether there are triable issues of material fact, we consider all the evidence set forth by the parties, except that to which objections have been made and properly sustained. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c); Guz v. Bechtel National, Inc. (2000) 24 Cal.4th 317, 334.) We accept as true the facts supported by plaintiff’s evidence and the reasonable inferences therefrom (Sada v. Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center (1997) 56 Cal.App.4th 138, 148), resolving evidentiary doubts or ambiguities in plaintiff’s favor (Saelzler v. Advanced Group 400, supra, 25 Cal.4th at p. 768).
Plaintiff’s complaint alleges a single cause of action for negligence—the breach of a duty to use due care. It alleges that defendants were negligent in two ways: (1) they assigned plaintiff a horse that had “skittish tendencies” and thus was unsuitable for a beginning rider; and (2) they failed properly to instruct plaintiff to control the horse to which she was assigned.
The trial court concluded that plaintiff’s negligence claim was barred by the doctrine of primary assumption of the risk because falling off a horse is an inherent risk of horseback riding. For the reasons that follow, we agree.
Our Supreme Court first articulated the modern doctrine of primary assumption of risk in Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th 296. There, the plaintiff was severely injured during a game of touch football when the defendant, a player on the opposing team, knocked her down and stepped on her hand. (Id. at pp. 300-301.) The trial court granted summary judgment for the defendant, concluding that there was no breach of duty. (Id. at p. 303.) The Supreme Court affirmed.
Applying this test to the case before it, the court concluded that the trial court had correctly granted summary judgment for defendant. “The declarations filed in support of and in opposition to the summary judgment motion establish that defendant was, at most, careless or negligent in knocking over plaintiff, stepping on her hand, and injuring her finger. Although plaintiff maintains that defendant’s rough play as described in her declaration[s] properly can be characterized as `reckless,’ the conduct alleged in those declarations is not even closely comparable to the kind of conduct—conduct so reckless as to be totally outside the range of the ordinary activity involved in the sport—that is a prerequisite to the imposition of legal liability upon a participant in such a sport.” (Knight, supra, 3 Cal.4th at pp. 320-321.) Thus, there was no breach of duty as a matter of law.
Although Knight addressed the duties owed in a touch football context, post-Knight cases have extended the primary assumption of risk doctrine to many other inherently dangerous sports, including horseback riding. Further, the cases have extended the doctrine to limit not only the duties owed by coparticipants in a sport to one another, but also to limit the duties owed by providers of recreational equipment (including horses) to their patrons, and the duties owed by teachers or coaches to students. We address these cases below.
Taken together, these three cases suggest that defendants had a duty to provide plaintiff with a horse appropriate for a beginning rider. The cases also suggest, however, that “sudden movements of a horse [are] just as inherent in horseback riding as the presence of moguls on a ski slope are to skiers” (Harrold v. Rolling J Ranch, supra, 19 Cal.App.4th at p. 588), and thus that a horse’s “sudden movement” on a single occasion does not support an inference that the horse was not appropriate for an inexperienced rider. Accordingly, to defeat summary judgment, plaintiff had to introduce evidence that prior to her accident Utah behaved in a way that should have alerted defendants to the horse’s alleged dangerous propensities or unsuitability for a beginning rider.
In support of their motion for summary judgment, defendants introduced the declaration of Kinnaman, TES’s president, and Lowell Peterson, TES’s barn manager. Kinnaman testified that she knows Utah to be “a gentle, well-behaved horse utilized by TES in beginner lessons.” Peterson testified that she had used Utah in beginner lessons with numerous students for approximately two years before plaintiff’s accident and that “[a]t no time prior to Ms. Deutsch’s lesson on September 2, 2004, had Utah `run away’ when ridden by an instructor or a student at TES.” Further, she said, “Based on my knowledge and experience as a riding instructor, as an equestrian and as a Barn Manager, as well as my personal knowledge and experience with this particular horse, I consider Utah to be an easy-going, well-behaved horse suitable for beginner riding lessons.” This testimony was sufficient to satisfy defendants’ burden to show that plaintiff’s cause of action has no merit, thus shifting to plaintiff the burden to show a triable issue of material fact.
Bergen’s testimony fails to raise a triable issue of fact because his conclusion that Utah was not suitable for a beginning rider was based entirely on the horse’s behavior on the day of plaintiff’s accident. In other words, Bergen’s opinions about Utah’s temperament and training were, by his own admission, “[b]ased on the description of the accident” and, specifically, on Utah’s failure “to remain under control while being ridden by Ms. Deutsch.” The cases discussed above are clear, however, that a horse’s unsuitability for a rider cannot, as a matter of law, be inferred from the fact that the horse made a sudden or unexpected movement on a particular occasion. Rather, to raise a triable issue of fact as to the horse’s suitability, a plaintiff must introduce independent evidence (such as the evidence submitted in Tan v. Goddard, supra, 13 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1530-1532, that plaintiff’s horse had been injured prior to plaintiff’s accident and was “off”) that the horse was not suitable for the activity prescribed. Bergen’s declaration does not contain any such independent evidence, and thus it does not raise a triable issue of material fact as to Utah’s alleged unsuitability for a beginning rider.
Applying the principles outlined in Kahn and Cohen to the present case, we conclude that plaintiff did not raise a triable issue of material fact as to defendants’ alleged breach of the duty to provide appropriate instruction to her. In opposition to defendants’ motion for summary judgment, plaintiff submitted the declaration of equestrian expert Rod Bergen. Bergen described several ways in which he believed TES failed to engage in safe hiring practices: He stated that no one associated with TES was accredited or certified by any of the three national riding instructor organizations (American Riding Instructors Association, Certified Horsemanship Association, and American Association for Horsemanship Safety); that TES did not properly screen its instructors before it hired them; and that TES did not require its new instructors to demonstrate an ability “to deal with the potential dangers that might confront totally inexperienced riders while taking their first riding lesson.” While these statements raise factual disputes regarding the propriety of TES’s hiring practices, those factual disputes are not material to the issues at hand. That is, to establish that there are disputed facts that are material to her negligence claim, plaintiff had to introduce evidence that her instructor was reckless in his interactions with her. That Cody may not have been properly accredited or trained is not evidence that he therefore acted recklessly during plaintiff’s riding lessons or that his alleged reckless conduct contributed to plaintiff’s injuries.
Bergen also identified in his declaration several ways in which he believed Cody failed to properly instruct plaintiff on critical horse handling skills. According to Bergen, Cody “failed to properly qualify Ms. Deutsch as to her horse riding and handling skills prior to her accident,” failed to “teach her any of the basics that she would need to know in order to safely ride and control the horse Utah,” “failed to properly instruct Ms. Deutsch as to how to stop her horse if a problem were to occur,” and “showed himself to be unqualified to teach horseback riding based upon some of the misinformation (or the lack of sound riding advice) that he gave to Ms. Deutsch.” None of these statements suggests that defendants’ conduct was “`totally outside the range of the ordinary activity’ . . . involved in teaching or coaching the sport” (Kahn, supra, 31 Cal.4th at p. 1011), because none describes what “range of the ordinary activity” was. In other words, unlike in Kahn, where plaintiff introduced documentary and expert evidence “that a settled progression of instruction in the dive is considered essential to a student’s safety” (id.at p. 1012), Bergen’s declaration says nothing about how beginning horseback riding students should be taught. Therefore, because it does not identify the range of ordinary activity, Bergen’s declaration is not evidence that Cody’s conduct fell outside that range.
Finally, Bergen states in his declaration that Cody contributed to plaintiff’s accident by “possibly tightening Utah’s cinch excessively” and “jumping in front of the horse and waving his arms in the air.” As to the first statement, that Utah’s cinch was “possibly” tightened excessively, the court sustained defendants’ objection on the ground that it was the product of speculation. Plaintiff does not challenge that ruling. The second is not supported by the record. Plaintiff’s testimony was that Utah either “started just running like crazy right at Cody or Cody jumped in front of her” and that Cody attempted to stop Utah by lifting his hands up in “this stop motion, two palms facing out way high up in the air.” In other words, plaintiff testified that she was not certain whether Utah ran towards Cody or Cody jumped in front of Utah; Bergen’s suggestion that Cody “jump[ed] in front of the horse” therefore is without evidentiary support. There also is no evidence that Cody “wav[ed] his arms in the air”; rather, plaintiff testified that Cody lifted his hands up in “this stop motion, two palms facing out way high up in the air.” Bergen’s testimony, therefore, does not raise a triable issue of fact.
In her appellant’s opening brief, plaintiff contends that there were triable issues of fact precluding summary judgment because Bergen and defendants’ expert disagreed about whether “an instructor needs to be trained,” “Cody was qualified to teach,” and “whether his actions and inactions substantially increased the risk to the student in question, Lisa Deutsch.” Even if in dispute, however, these opinions do not preclude summary judgment because they are not material—i.e., they do not bear on the relevant issues whether Cody acted intentionally or recklessly.
For all of these reasons, the trial court properly granted summary judgment for defendants.
The judgment for defendants is affirmed. Defendants are awarded their costs on appeal.

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