Car Hits Horse. Is There A Lawsuit?
I was driving on a country road late a night. I came around a sharp curve at a reasonable speed and there was a black horse standing in the middle of the road. I swerved to miss it, but hit it and then hit a rock wall on the side of the road. My car was totaled and I was injured. The man that owned the horse lived on the adjoining property. Can I sue him for my injuries? That horse should not have been on the road.
You can sue him, but you will have to prove that he was negligent in controlling the horse. Under the law of Tennessee the horse must be fenced in but if there was a fence the landowner will claim that the fence was adequate and you have to prove the landowner was negligent.
It will be important to hire an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as possible to investigate this matter. It will be important to document the condition of any fence and to learn how the horse was able to escape. It will also be important to learn with the horse or other farm animals roamed off the property in the past.
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I wrote about this subject recently on the blog I write for Tennessee tort lawyers, Day on Torts. Read the blog post about a case in Mississippi about the liability on landowners for not controlling horses here.
