Waak v. Rodriguez
| Decision Date | 12 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 19-0167,19-0167 |
| Citation | 603 S.W.3d 103 |
| Parties | Conway WAAK, Jr. and Marlene Waak d/b/a Carmine Charolais Ranch, and Carmine Charolais Ranch, Petitioners v. Raul Amparo Zuniga RODRIGUEZ and Ana Maria Ortiz Martinez, Individually and as Personal Representatives and Heirs of the Estate of Raul Amparo Zuniga Ortiz, Jr.; and Juana Guadalupe Martinez, as Next Friend of Sebastian Zuniga and Wendy Zuniga, et al., Respondents |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
Stewart Kimball Schmella, Nicholas J. Lanza, Lanza Law Firm, PC, 2502 Algerian Way, Houston, TX 77098, for Petitioners.
Richard P. Hogan Jr., Jennifer Bruch Hogan, Hogan & Hogan, Pennzoil Place, 711 Louisiana, Suite 500, Houston, TX 77002, James Christian Marrow, Wright, Close & Barger, LLP, One Riverway, Suite 2200, Houston, TX 77056-1981, John M. Padilla, Padilla & Rodriguez, L.L.P., 5433 Westheimer, Suite 825, Houston, TX 77056, Jose Moises Cedillos, Cedillos Law Firm PLLC, 3801 Kirby Dr., Suite 510, Houston, TX 77098-4159, for Respondents
The Texas Farm Animal Activity Act1 limits liability for injury to "a participant in a farm animal activity or livestock show" that results from an "inherent risk" of such activities,2 "whether the person is an amateur or professional or ... pays ... or participates ... for free".3 A divided court of appeals held that the Act does not apply to ranchers and ranch hands.4 We agree and affirm the court's judgment.
For many years, petitioners Conway and Marlene Waak have bred Charolais cattle5 on their 760-acre Carmine Charolais Ranch in Fayette County west of Brenham.
In 2005, they hired Raul Zuniga part-time to work the cattle, landscape, and cut hay. Three years later, Zuniga began working for the Waaks full-time, living on the ranch in a mobile home he was buying from them.
At first, Conway trained Zuniga how to work and cut cattle, observing to see that he did the work properly. Zuniga had no set work schedule; instead, the Waaks gave him various tasks to perform each day. He often worked cattle alone while Conway worked at his oilfield consulting business.
When cattle had to be moved from place to place on the ranch, they were herded into a pen, moved through a chute onto a trailer, hauled to the new location, and unloaded. Conway showed Zuniga what equipment and strategies to use to move the cattle and how to "punch them up"—prod them to move through the chute leading them onto the trailer.
In October 2013, Conway asked Zuniga, 33, to move 20 head of cattle from one end of the ranch to the other, something Zuniga had done many times. The Waaks then left the ranch to run errands in Brenham. After moving most of the cattle, Zuniga called the Waaks to confirm that he should move the last three remaining in the pen in the barn: a 2,000 pound bull, a cow, and the cow's calf. They replied that he should. When the Waaks returned home, they found Zuniga lying dead behind the barn. The bull and the two cows were still in the pen. The medical examiner determined that Zuniga's cause of death was "blunt force and crush injuries" that were "severe enough to have come from extensive force like that of a large animal trampling the body".
Respondents, Zuniga's parents and surviving children, sued the Waaks, nonsubscribers under the Texas Workers' Compensation Act, on wrongful death and survival claims.6 Plaintiffs allege that the bull killed Zuniga and that the Waaks were negligent in several respects, including failing to provide a safe workplace, failing to train Zuniga and warn him of the dangers of working cattle, and failing to supervise him. The trial court granted summary judgment for the Waaks after concluding that the Farm Animal Activity Act (the Farm Animal Act or the Act ) barred the plaintiffs' claims. The court of appeals reversed, holding that Zuniga "was not a participant in a farm animal activity" for whose injuries and death the Act limits liability.7
We granted the Waaks' petition for review.
The Waaks argue that the Farm Animal Act applies by its plain terms to ranching—working farm animals for a living or for profit.
The Farm Animal Act is a somewhat expanded revision of the Equine Activity Act (the Equine Act ) passed in 1995.8 To interpret the Farm Animal Act, we must first examine its history.9
The Equine Act was a product of a national movement spurred by the horse industry to protect itself from liability for injuries due to the inherent risks of being around the animals that reasonable people should expect.10 Those common expectations had always completely protected horse owners from negligence liability through the absolute common law defenses of contributory negligence and volenti non fit injuria —voluntary assumption of the risk. Those defenses precluded a person from recovering damages for injuries sustained in voluntarily exposing himself to the known risks of being around a horse. But as those absolute defenses were gradually replaced in state after state by comparative negligence, which reduces liability only based on a plaintiff's share in the responsibility for injury,11 the horse industry's liability, together with the costs of litigation, naturally increased. The industry's proposed fix was a uniform act to be adopted state by state limiting liability for certain horse-related activities. In the five years before Texas enacted its version of the statute, more than 25 states had already beaten us to the punch.12
The Equine Act provided that "any person, including an equine activity sponsor or an equine professional, is not liable for property damage or damages arising from the personal injury or death of a participant ... [that] results from the dangers or conditions that are an inherent risk of equine activity".13 Included among the statute's list of inherent risks was "the propensity of an equine animal to behave in ways that may result in personal injury or death to a person on or around it", as well as "the unpredictability of an equine animal's reaction to sound, a sudden movement, or an unfamiliar object, person, or other animal".14
An "equine activity sponsor" shielded from liability was defined in general terms as "a person or group who sponsors, organizes, or provides the facilities for an equine activity ... without regard to whether the person operates for profit", with a list of inclusive examples: "equine facilities for a pony club, 4-H club, hunt club, riding club, therapeutic riding program, or high school or college class, program, or activity".15 The definition also included "an operator of, instructor at, or promoter for ... facilities ... at which an equine activity is held" but again added an inclusive list of examples of the facilities intended: "a stable, clubhouse, pony ride string, fair, or arena".16 A "participant", whose recovery was limited by the Act, was defined as "a person who engages in an equine activity, without regard to whether the person is an amateur or professional or whether the person pays for the activity or participates in the activity for free."17
"Equine activity" was defined as including:
The Act defined "engag[ing] in an equine activity" as "riding, handling, training, driving, assisting in the medical treatment of, being a passenger on, or assisting a participant or sponsor with an equine animal."23 The definition specifically included "management of a show" but excluded "being a spectator at an equine activity unless ... in an unauthorized area and in immediate proximity to the equine activity."24
Notably, as these lengthy excerpts repeatedly demonstrate, the Equine Act described its coverage not in general terms or concepts but with detailed and specific examples. An equine activity might simply have been defined as any activity involving an equine. Instead, the statute defined the two words with a 158-word sentence containing some 40 examples.25 An equine activity is not just a "show, fair, competition, performance, or parade," but one that involves "any equine discipline," which is described with 13 examples.26 The definition includes "single event competitions," but rather than stop there, it adds, "including team roping, calf roping, and single steer roping."27 An equine activity sponsor provides facilities not just for a club, but for "a pony club, 4-H club, hunt club, [or] riding club".28
The Equine Act's prolixity made obvious that it was entirely concerned with equine activities unrelated to ranching—that is, breeding, feeding, and working equine animals as a vocation. In all its scores of examples, there was no hint of any application to ranchers' and ranch hands' involvement with horses. The omission must be meaningful.
In the relatively few instances when the Equine Act did speak in general terms, those terms must be read in connection with the statute's examples. The statute limited the liability of "any person, including an equine activity sponsor or an equine professional".29 Ordinarily, "including" is a term of enlargement.30 But "any person", in the abstract, cannot be enlarged upon. Removed from its context, it is universal. To read the phrase as such would make the two examples that follow surplusage,...
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