Court: Deputy AG Should Blame Herself, Not Ranch Owners, for Horse Fall
A deputy attorney general who sued the owners of a ranch after she fell from a galloping horse and broke her hip won’t be able to pursue her lawsuit.
A California appeals court said in a ruling yesterday that lawyer Ellyn Levinson of Oakland has only herself to blame for the 2005 fall from a horse named Pistol, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise and the Legal Pad blog.
“Simply stated,” the court said, “when the social guest asked her social hosts to allow her to ride one of their horses on their cattle ranch, and she professed to have the experience to do so, she ‘bit off more than she could chew’ and has only herself to blame for her inability to control a horse that behaved as a horse when it uncharacteristically galloped off.”
Levinson’s lawyer, Nancy Hersh, told Legal Pad an appeal is planned. “They wanted to come to a certain conclusion,” she said of the appellate judges, “and they did so.”
