So they did not practice due diligence (PPE, drug screen) and now they sue the seller. I think this is a very bad thing for the horse industry. Unless the sellers told them NOT to have a vet and a trainer (theirs) look at the horse I think the guy just used him bottomless funds to sue himself out of a deal that went south. I really fail to see that is something to celebrate.
If the sellers did anything to that horse like cobra venom injections for nerve blocks, it wouldn’t show up on either the vet records or a PPE, and it would wear off over time. That would be blatantly fraudulent to my thinking.
We don’t know what the testimony was; only that the horse had had injections immediately before the sale. If the injections were of blocking substances (like cobra venom, which is, BTW, infamous at race tracks), then maybe the jury had enough to sustain a verdict.
You absolutely do not know that a horse has been injected prior to he vetting if the steroid has cleared the system when the blood is checked for medications and general organ health.There may be a test that I am unaware .
It is not confusing to follow in the least. A high quality horse was offered with the assurance of the owners and their vets as a capable healthy horse, ready and willing to do what they were selling him for.
Trainer or buyer schedules an exam with an expert veterinarian. All radiographs are taken, blood, flexions, etc.etc.ec. very diligent examination.
Horse sails through the prepurchase BECAUSE he was “prepared” for the exam. Steroids can give a horse a major boost in performance for a period of time for example joint injections that relieve swelling and if given with hyaluronic acid can maintain the joints of a show horse. If this procedure is done to mask a problem deliberately and by deception for the gain of money isn’t that fraud ?
I am confused.
The guy did or did not get a PPE?
According to local rumors, the horse was somehow “prepared” for the PPE? Selleck did not, I take it, draw blood for that. Nor did he ask to speak to the regular horse’s vet, as the trainer contends?
Finally, are they complaining about injecting joints with steroids or systemic steriods? I don’t think you can throw a rock at a horse show without hitting some animal who has had some kind of steroid injected into some joint. Selleck can’t be that naive, or complaining about joint injection’s right? If so, he really pulled a fast one on the jury.
I doubt it. Most people get prepurchase exams at that level, but I know of very few sellers who allow buyers to examine past medical records - and fewer still who keep any records of repeated steroid injections right before a sale. It’s also possible for the medication to not be detectable by the time the blood sample is taken.
These don’t sound like maintenance injections. I’m sure the medical issues were covered in far greater detail in court and a lot of issues were involved.
OK, “asking the horse’s regular vet” That opens another can of worms. If this vet were giving the horse things he shouldn’t be having, what makes anyone think he/she would give truthful answers to questions asked? How many of us here have asked or even know who the regular vet of horses we bought even is? Why do we get some other vet to do the PPE?
You know, if I was going to cheat someone in a horse deal, I wouldn’t pick a celebrity with access to fantastic lawyers and a bottomless bank account.
Just sayin’.
I’m surprised he didn’t have blood pulled at the PPE. I thought that was pretty standard. Not testing it of course - but just having it pulled and stored in case the horse goes nuts or lame soon after the purchase. Then you shell out the money for testing for masking/medication.
If the didn’t have a PPE done - well know. That’s just stupid. For that amount of money you have a PPE done - and not just a basic one. Not just to avoid a fraudulent sale, but to give you information about the horse - independent, unbiased information.
Well - glad he was able to get that resolved but I feel sorry for the horse.
Magnum P.I. triumphs again! I hope he gets $$$ punitive damages and puts that poor horse at a retirement farm. Sometimes you have to give the animal back when you sue, and sometimes you don’t, depending on the circumstances.
Everyone should ask for permission to view all the vet records for a proposed horse purchase, but as others have said, a lot of doping is “off the charts.” Vet could sell drugs to BO or trainer for the barn use, and then horse can be injected without the drugs showing up on that horse’s chart. So maybe everyone who is thinking of buying a horse should ask to look at all the records of the person/barn selling the horse?
There’s always a way to cheat buyers. Maybe we need a checklist to have the seller sign off on, listing drugs, medical conditions with “yes” and “no” answers, although then they would say that they “didn’t know” what the horse had wrong with him.
Best to buy from people who are reputable. There was a thread on this a little while back, and not many sellers/dealers were listed. I know 2 of those.
[QUOTE=Jumphigh83;4355903]
So they did not practice due diligence (PPE, drug screen) and now they sue the seller. I think this is a very bad thing for the horse industry. Unless the sellers told them NOT to have a vet and a trainer (theirs) look at the horse I think the guy just used him bottomless funds to sue himself out of a deal that went south. I really fail to see that is something to celebrate.[/QUOTE]
I disagree. As I read the piece there were statements made that the horse was sound for the purposes for which is it was being purchased. If a seller avers that “this horse is serviceably sound as an amateur level jumper” then a buyer is entitled to rely upon it. Certainly, at this level ($120,000), a “full boat PPE” would be a good idea. A buyer’s failure to do such a PPE does not relieve a seller from the responsibility for making false statement.
Since the trial transcript, depositions, etc. have not been posted we don’t know just who said what to whom. The jury heard the full story. That gives some credibility to their decision.
Seems to me the Moral of the Story is that sellers have a duty to be honest in their practices and should not sell to rich people with the means to hold them to their words. 
G.
[QUOTE=copper1;4356037]
OK, “asking the horse’s regular vet” That opens another can of worms. If this vet were giving the horse things he shouldn’t be having, what makes anyone think he/she would give truthful answers to questions asked? How many of us here have asked or even know who the regular vet of horses we bought even is? Why do we get some other vet to do the PPE?[/QUOTE]
Didn’t we just have a thread on this? Buyer & seller use the same vet, so how much can/should the vet disclose of the horse’s medical history if buyer asks?
Last I read that thread, there was a huge debate on what was legal for the vet to share vs. what was ethical & in the best interest of the horse.
Bottom line is that the seller’s intent was to deceive, the fact that the buyer didn’t or couldn’t have caught her deceit if it wasn’t even detectable is beside the point. The seller may now have people coming out of the woodwork going after her for doing the same thing to them. Too bad, too bad greed got in the way of ethics. Good for Tom for standing on principle.
The problem with saying, ‘he didn’t check the horse’s medical history so he deserves whatever he gets’ is that is not how the courts work. That’s how people THINK, but it isn’t how the court works.
Complaining about the ‘lack of personal responsibility today’ is irrelevant. The trend toward seller responsibility has been evolving in the law for 300 years; it is not new.
The facts are this - you sell a horse to a buyer and that horse doesn’t work out - you could be in very serious trouble, depending on how you carried out the sale and what your bill of sale says and what you said…even on what you DIDN’T SAY.
First of all, all it takes is a vet’s office getting damaged, closing or moving, or a computer problem, or an archive problem, to lose medical history on a horse. And if the seller doesn’t keep a copy of it, it doesn’t exist.
He can just as easily get an out of town vet to do work on the QT, or any number of other tactics, or even simpler, not treat the horse or buy the medications on the internet and treat the horse himself. Or he can just slip the people involved a little cash and they don’t tell anyone.
In fact, most people NEVER see complete medical records for horses they buy. They rely on their prepurchase vet to find existing conditions and to discuss how much of an issue those conditions might be for the intended use.
In many ways, they don’t view selling horses as all that different from selling anything else.
If you sell me a car, and I don’t take it to a mechanic, and a wheel falls off and I get in a bad accident, you are still liable for selling the dangerous, defective car if it was something you clearly knew about - for example, you took the car to a mechanic, he said the wheel was faulty and needed expensive repair, and you decided to sell the car instead of getting it fixed.
Unless you told me the wheel was faulty, you can face action. It doesn’t matter if I took the car to a mechanic or not. The law firm can make a few phone calls and easily find out you knew the car had a problema nd sold it anyway.
Just by putting the car on the market, you assume a certain level of legal responsibility that it is useful for the intended purpose - a car is expected to be driven on the road. By selling it, you are, to a point, already warranting that it can be driven safely.
The wisest path is to put on the bill of sale, ‘mechanic advises wheel be repaired before driving, sold strictly as is’.
When I sold a ‘serviceably sound’ horse, I put on the bill of sale, in writing, ‘sold as is, mild arthritis in hocks, buyer has chosen to waive prepurchase exam against seller’s advice’. I also gave the buyer bandages, wraps, liniment, hyaluron syringes, a bottle of bute, and other articles and mentioned them in the bill of sale. And discussed with her at length the kind of program and maintenance the horse needed, his medical history, etc. Do people try to use that as leverage to get the price down? They can try, and the seller might drop the price, or the horse was already priced with all that taken in to consideration, and that was the price.
I think that the more you explicitly write into the bill of sale, the more you discuss with the seller openly and frankly, the less likely is action against you.
Things are changing in horse sales. They are no longer the sacred unregulated ground they were for many years. Instead of ‘caveat emptor’, it should be ‘caveat seller’! More and more, commissions must be revealed and other parties in the sale cannot hide under the table. Medical histories can’t be hidden, and equine sellers are being held to the same standards sellers of any other items are.
On the other hand, if you were to buy a horse that simply wasn’t athletic enough for the type of competition you intended, and it was able to work at a lower level, and the seller didn’t make any very specific remarks, it’s unlikely the seller would face any action.
I have already seen that most sellers are very cagey about making specific claims about a horse.
When I was shown a very limited mare, for example, the seller said, ‘she’s a wonderful competitor’, rather than, ‘this horse will win the regionals at third level’.
They say things that are general and vague, and do not make specific enough claims to face action. You rarely, for example, hear any seller say, ‘This horse will do Grand Prix in three years’, they say, when you ask, ‘Well, there is a lot that goes into that, and no guarantees, but if she was mine, I’d sure try’. MOST sellers are smart enough not to make actionable claims.
When they do, they eventually get caught.
The message of this case is, though, loud and clear. ‘Well, he didn’t get the medical records, so he deserves what he gets’ does NOT protect the seller from being successfully sued.
Caveat seller! People need to get on the bus; reality has changed, but people’s thinking has not, and the age of unregulated horse dealing is done. That dichotomy between what the law is and what people THINK it is, is what puts people into court on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
You got that right ! I can say with Absolute certainty that a full and extensive PPE was done. It seems that the medical records did not show that the horse had recent work done and that is the crux of the matter.
wow, what are boarding prices in SoCal? $67,000 for 2 years board? ( news said the horse was $120 k and the rest was for board?) And Selleck says he keeps the horses at home? Who is duping whom?
When selling a horse, you should be responsible for disclosing any known issues. It should not be up to the buyer to ferret them out.
I bet the 47k was for full training board, and included every possible service. I think this is a good decision, because who knows what was actually in the vet records and if the vet used before the PPE was the regular vet. It could very well be that they went to another vet or practice to avoid disclosure. In my view this isn’t a case of buyer’s remorse over a horse that wasn’t able to perform at a certain level, but a horse that was rigged for sale with premeditation and the seller thought the Sellecks would write it off as ‘s*#$ happens’ and retire the horse.
After seeing all of the other threads about people who were lied to by sellers and didn’t have the cash to pursue it, I’m glad the Sellecks did pursue it. Maybe some of the really unethical sellers will think twice, and the publicity should make a real dent in the sellers business.
That’s about $2800 per month? Expensive board, but not unheard of for training board. Although if the horse were unsound I can’t see much training being done. Not that the barn would lower the board cost though, some might not.
I think that you misunderstand- the Sellecks have their “pet” horses at home not their show horses. 
…and this deceitful and fraudulent sale took TWO YEARS to discern? <<<sigh>>>>:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::dead:
