Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
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Get out your insurance policy and read it. Most homeowner policies have a
clause about pets .. it's usually intended for things like dogs biting people,
but it should cover horses. I know my parents insurance company bought a new
tire for one of their guests aftre a dog chewed a hole in it.
I don't know anyone who's ever tried to collect on a liability claim from
horse inflicted damage.
When I got my farm policy, which is basically just a beefed up homeowners
policy, I specifically asked the agent if it would cause damages caused by
horses. He said yes, and asked what kind they were. When I said TB, he balked
a little, and said the company didn't like insuring TBs because they were
crazy. I pointed out that these were not money-making horses, so if they were
really crazy I wouldn't keep them. He went along with that, and wrote into
the policy that it covered my horses used for pleasure purposes, or something
like that.
There's another potential problem with car-horse accidents. There's a clause
in my policy which says something to the effect that it doesn't cover claims
resulting from motor-vehicle accidents. That's pretty standard in home-owners
policies ... they don't want to be hooked for stuff that should be covered by
your car insurance. But it might be stretched to weasel their way out of
paying up if your horse damages a car. Look for a clause like that in your
policy, and see how loose the wording is. Also consider whether your company
is likely to follow the letter or the intent of the clause. My company
continued to pay lawyers to defend me in a lawsuit even after the lawyers
pointed out several clauses that could have gotten them off the hook. One was
the motor-vehicle clause. I was sued because a jerk on a motorcycle ran into a
truck that was about to pull out of my driveway. It wasn't my truck ... I didn'teven know the driver. But I was sued for having a "dangerous driveway." The
lawyers said the company wasn't liable because the accident involved motor
vehicles, which was specifically excluded in the policy. But the company,
being a fairly honorable one, decided that wasn't really the intent of that
clause.
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