Through your education, you acquire the fundamentals of farriery. You work a lifetime to hone your craft. And although you entered this profession for the good of the horse, there is a business side to this profession. One component of the business is dealing with the legal issues that may arise in your practice.
This article can’t cover them all, and it may take you a lifetime to appreciate them. But, here are five important, basic legal principles that a new farrier must understand before launching a practice.
1. Farrier Malpractice
Malpractice is something that most people associate with doctors, lawyers and other professionals. But, the earliest malpractice legal case arose in 1441, referred to as “Marshall’s Case” in England. It involved a farrier who so negligently treated and carelessly applied medicines that a horse died. Early American cases involving farrier malpractice can be found in Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Simply put by the American Heritage Dictionary, “malpractice” means improper or unethical conduct by the holder of a professional position. It has a specific legal meaning that most Americans, thanks to prime-time television, can appreciate:
Do you need to fetch the horse before you work with it? If so, you’ve assumed a legal responsibility even before you pick up a foot.
“[The] failure to provide professional services with the skill usually exhibited by responsible and careful members of the profession, resulting in injury, loss or damage to the party contracting those services.”
As a farrier – holding oneself out to the public as someone educated, trained, and skilled to provide a specific service or services – clients expect a level of care in the services that are provided. And, it is possible to fail to perform those services in a way that other members of the profession would. When that happens and it causes harm, the farrier has committed malpractice.
No one doctor, lawyer, accountant or farrier sets out to cause harm in his or her work. But, the nature of any professional practice allows malpractice to rear its ugly head.
The potential for malpractice arises when a client presents a problem that requires a degree of training, skill or experience that you have yet to acquire and you do not respond appropriately.
Responding appropriately may mean consulting with someone else, doing some research or refusing to do the work. It can also mean taking on the case and doing it well through either luck or design.
Malpractice can also occur when a professional chooses to do something that he or she is not trained, prepared or experienced to do. For example, a farrier may choose to collect a horse from its pasture area prior to shoeing it. In the process, the horse is harmed because the farrier was unfamiliar with the pasture and how the horse should be collected. The farrier was liable for malpractice because he or she volunteered to do something outside the scope of shoeing the horse.
I pulled this simple, relevant example from the 1800s in Ohio. Farriers, because of their exposure to the client, are often the first people horse owners ask about training issues, feed, supplements, vitamins, tack and a myriad of other issues that can come up with a horse. Develop a good network of other equine professionals to respond to these issues.
Just like the farrier in 1441, you can be brought before a proper court in your jurisdiction and be asked to pay for any harm that you have caused. While the laws will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, everyone will still follow the same general rule established almost 600 years ago.
2. Veterinary Practices Acts
As a farrier, you have the opportunity to work with other equine professionals to determine the appropriate care for a particular animal. In many instances, you may work with a veterinary professional. Every state prohibits, by statute, anyone except a licensed veterinarian from performing veterinary medicine.
When does the work of a farrier stop and the practice of veterinary medicine begin? The statutes are not helpful in answering this. Even the Model Veterinary Practices Act does not help:
“Veterinary medicine means all branches and specialties included within the practice of veterinary medicine.”
This circular definition does not offer much guidance on what veterinary medicine is. Most farriers will agree that whatever “veterinary medicine” is, it starts somewhere above the hoof structure. And you will hear this topic cussed and discussed as your profession continues to struggle with it.
Granted, some states, such as Maryland, Arkansas and Florida, have considered legislation to clarify that farriers and what they do are exempt from this act. But, those efforts have been met with varying degrees of success. This article is not the appropriate place for a state-by-state discussion. As a new farrier, you need to know and understand the law of the state(s) in which you practice.
As Virginia equine veterinarian Steve O’Grady states on his website, “Cooperation and the symbiotic relationship between the veterinary and farrier professions continues to grow and improve.”
You can do your part by understanding your state’s expectations as to your role as a farrier and following them.
3. Business Record Rules
If you have chosen to open your own business, you must comply with state and federal laws with respect to your business records. This includes everything from state and federal tax laws to protecting client information.
For example, if you intend to deduct mileage on your federal income tax return for your business use of a vehicle, you need to keep a written log documenting this use. You also have to keep the original bills, invoices and other business documents that show you spent money for your business if you intend to deduct it as a business expense.
If you have client financial
information, like credit cards, you must protect that information under federal laws. There has been a great deal of discussion and legal concern regarding privacy protection in the form of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Bank Secrecy Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and many other federal and state laws and regulations.
Even your invoices as a farrier must comply with state and federal law to protect your clients. Your invoice must contain certain information in order to be enforceable. That is, if you ever have to pursue a client for nonpayment of your invoice, the invoice must stand up in court.
The invoice should say “invoice” and include the date of service, date of the invoice, your name or business name and details, name and details of the buyer, description of the goods or services listed separately, unit prices of the goods and services listed separately, total charges, any taxes, payment terms and amount owed.
If your invoice is correct and your client fails to pay you, collecting on the invoice is a relatively simple matter. Most states recognize a simple cause of action called a “suit on sworn account” or something similar. To bring one, all you have to file is an affidavit swearing to the invoices that have not been paid. There is very little a person can do to avoid paying when a suit on sworn account or the like is brought to recover payment.
You will also need to keep accounting records for your business for purposes of state and federal taxes. There are good software packages out there to help, some designed specifically for farriers. You can, of course, keep records the old-fashioned way. No matter how you choose to keep your records, keep them. And, it helps if you involve an accountant in this process.
4. Forming A Business
You may choose to form a business entity. There are lots of different kinds of business entities. There are sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships and corporations.
To avoid legal complications, work to the extent of your knowledge and skill.
The variety of business entity types to choose from depends entirely on the jurisdiction in which you live and choose to form a business.
Not every person needs to form a business. Those who need to form a business do so because the business entity allows individuals to protect their personal assets from exposure if anything happens in the business.
For example, farrier Jane owns a large tract of land that has significant value. While driving to a shoeing appointment, she is involved in an auto accident in her rig that is her fault. The damages in the accident are significant and exceed any insurance available. The persons that were injured decide to sue the farrier for causing the car accident.
Even though she was traveling for business, Jane’s personal assets — her land — may be at risk if she does not have the money to pay for the harm caused by the accident. At the end of the day, Jane could lose the land to satisfy any judgment obtained against her by the victims of the car accident.
If the farrier had formed a business entity, the existence of the entity may have protected her personal assets from the judgment.
The decision to create a business entity should not be taken lightly. Business entities must comply with state and federal reporting requirements. The more complex the entity, the more complex the requirements.
When the need comes for you to form a business, consult with a lawyer and an accountant in your state regarding the regulations in your state and the tax consequences for you.
5. Equine Liability Acts
Every state has some type of law to protect horse people from lawsuits by people injured by horses. The important thing that farriers need to know about these laws is that they cut both ways. That means that they protect the farrier from others, but they also protect horse owners from the farrier.
They protect farriers when the farrier is the person performing the equine activity and someone else is injured. For example, a farrier is working on a horse in an appropriate area outside a busy barn. Someone, who is not paying attention because they are texting on their phone, walks too near the area where the farrier is working and is somehow injured by the horse. The farrier is probably not liable as long as she has complied with the equine liability act.
But, they protect owners from the farrier when the farrier is the one injured. In another example, our farrier is working on a horse she has never worked on before, and unknown to the farrier, it can be difficult to control. In the ordinary course of the farrier’s work, the farrier is injured when the horse suddenly and unexpectedly behaves in such a way as to cause injury.
Most would agree that the owner or manager of the animal should have told the farrier about the animal’s tendencies. Even so, the equine liability act will probably protect the owner or manager from a claim by the farrier for the injury caused by the animal.
The language of the particular statute will determine how it applies. And, the act varies from state to state. Here’s the Texas statute as an example:
“Except as provided by Section 87.004, any person, including an equine activity sponsor, equine professional, livestock show participant, or livestock show sponsor, is not liable for property damage or damages arising from the personal injury or death of a participant in an equine activity or livestock show if the property damage, injury, or death results from the dangers or conditions that are an inherent risk of an equine activity or the showing of an animal on a competitive basis in a livestock show, including: (1) the propensity of an equine or livestock animal to behave in ways that may result in personal injury or death to a person on or around it; (2) the unpredictability of an equine or livestock animal’s reaction to sound, a sudden movement, or an unfamiliar object, person or other animal; (3) with respect to equine activities, certain land conditions and hazards, including surface and subsurface conditions; (4) a collision with another animal or an object; or (5) the potential of a participant to act in a negligent manner that may contribute to injury to the participant or another, including failing to maintain control over the equine or livestock animal or not acting within the participant’s ability.”
Most states require that the act be posted somewhere if you intend to rely on it. A discussion of these state-by-state requirements goes beyond the scope of this article. But, you should be familiar with the requirements of the act in the state(s) in which you practice and comply with them if you intend to rely on them.
An Arabian proverb says “the horse is God’s gift to mankind.” As the wife of a farrier, I know how rewarding it is to spend every day doing something that God gifted you with a talent and heart for doing.
Do not let the technicalities of our society prevent you from doing that. Find professionals – lawyers, doctors, insurance agents, accountants – who own horses and earn their business. That way, when a pesky non-horse issue raises its head, you will have a place to start to find the answer.
