We all sign waivers when we ride, we all know riding is inherently dangerous, and horses are unpredictable. Does this still apply when the barn owner doesn’t take responsibility to maintain a safe facility? I am talking about leaving equipment like shovels, rakes, or 4 wheelers very close to doors where horses are led into and out of arenas, or running noisy equipment close, but out of sight of where riders are working hot, young horses. Asking due to a conversation I had with a BO who felt the waiver covered anything, and that “horses need to become used to it”.
A waiver will serve as a Better Than Nothing piece of evidence if an accident goes to suit.
Insurance companies will go after anyone & everyone to avoid paying a claim.
See: Subrogation 
I agree with your BO.
Horses do need to get used to things in their environment.
Riders/Owners also need to be vigilant about things like the tools, vehicles, etc left out.
Example:
I am in the habit of leaving my muckfork in the wheelbarrow I park in my aisle.
My mini was loose in the aisle, perusing stacked hay bales, when he got in my way.
I shooed him & he ran into the handle of the fork.
Spooked himself & skittered a bit.
My Bad for not stowing the fork in a safer manner.
Also my Bad for allowing him the freedom of the aisle AND for not looking where he was before asking him to move.
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If you feel that a facility is not being run safely, don’t support it, don’t ride there. Ride elsewhere instead. Signing and riding when you know there are issues that you are not comfortable with is not a good idea. Idiots and goofballs are running equine facilities, and don’t have a clue about basic safety, and accidents abound. If you can easily identify those people in advance, best to stay away. In my waiver, I have included a clause that says “I have found the facility to be safe” for the riders to agree to. If a rider does not think it is a safe facility, they should not sign and should not ride. I would not ride at a facility that is being poorly run, and has such obvious issues that you can identify in advance as known perils. Save yourself the headache in advance.
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According to a lawyer friend of mine, when I asked him about all the teeny tiny print found on the back of amusement park tickets (the “ride at one’s own risk” boilerplate), he told me that waiver doesn’t mean that a patron agrees to negligence. Note that this was a friend, a long time ago, and he wasn’t giving me official legal advice.
I think the same would be true of a boarding establishment. We sign waivers because horses are large, somewhat unpredictable animals, not to give carte blanche to careless, irresponsible management. Signing a waiver should not mean accepting negligent treatment from the humans, standard safety precautions are not expected, facilities can be dangerously ill-maintained, etc., and that any unfortunate consequences from these are the sole responsibility of whoever signed the waiver.
Of course we should vote with our feet, but people don’t know what they don’t know, and an inexperienced person might not realize that certain conditions are unsafe.
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Yes to both @Jarpur and @NancyM.
If you are finding the barn staff repeatedly do things that genuinely put you at risk, like firing up a chain saw with no warning right outside the indoor arena, then you need to leave. If it’s just a matter of aesthetics and clutter, that’s different. But once you decide the barn manager is an idiot who is going to get you killed, all the little bits add up and you lose respect for them, it’s time to move on.
As far as negligence, I’d say that’s for things you as the client can’t forsee. Like the ferris wheel collapses. Like the arena roof collapses out of the blue because the beams have rotted out.
I’d say if the equipment is regularly stored beside say the arena door, and you know this, it’s going to be hard to prove negligence if your horse spooks one day. You saw the thing and accepted the risks.
That said I particularly feel harrows should be well out of the way because they would be easy to get tangled up in.
I also think it’s good horsemanship to reduce hazards and clutter as much as possible, it’s part of keeping a functional barn.
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Who cares about the waiver?
If you need to threaten the barn owner with a lawsuit to get them to stop leaving sh*t everywhere and firing up the weedwhacker under your nose, how on earth would you trust them with your horse’s care?
Go somewhere where the barn owners aren’t complete yahoos.
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I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on television. That being said;
You’ve got three different things to consider with a waiver. Inherent risk, negligence, and malice.
Inherent risk; your horse spooks at the tractor when they drive it near the arena.
Negligence: the tractor has a known gas leak that hasn’t been fixed and explodes near the arena.
Malice: the barn owner chases you down and runs you over with the tractor.
The waiver only covers inherent risk, and even then, any insurance agency will try to make it into negligence. Which is why having a good insurance policy is important. There’s no waiver that will stand up that will cover negligence or malice.
The problem of course becomes the fine line between risk and negligence.
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I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. Tools and work are a necessary part of a farm. Folks can’t stop mowing every time Betty comes to ride Dobbin or stop pressure washing when Sue wants to groom Pookie.
In reality a broom n muck bucket by the door and non stop mowing / weed eating are pretty normal.
Now machetes in the aisle and blowing dynamite in the pastures would be unacceptable.
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This was my thought too.
I have never been at a boarding barn that they stopped mowing, manure removal, etc. while people were riding.
You (general) either figure out how to deal with the noise or how to ride when that noise is not happening.
A muck fork, rake, brook, etc by the door in the aisle is pretty standard.
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Heck even at my own private farm this is reality. I can’t go tell the neighbors to stop riding their go kart bc I want to ride. Heck recently I had workers felling trees not 100 ft and in plain view of my barn while the farrier was trimming hooves.
I mean I’ll ask Mr LS not to do burn outs in the hot rod while I’m handling horses but at this point I think the horses are probably used to even that.
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Heck, one day my farrier was working on my horse in the aisle (which was right next to the entrance of the indoor) while the owner was dragging the indoor ring, going around and around and around on the tractor all kinds of clattering noises.
Was the owner really supposed to reschedule ring dragging?
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Exactly. These things have to happen and the farm can’t stop just bc Dobbin is in the cross ties.
Now OP was not specific in what the loud noises and tools were so maybe their BO is doing some weird stuff. But regular chores and maintenance have to go on.
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Every situation is different, but when we were considering opening our arena to the public, our attorney made us appropriate liability releases.
He then said to have them and use them, but they really were not much legal protection, that anyone can sue that wants to anyway and that, honestly, no one can sign their rights away, as many assume liability releases provide, just don’t count of them being very useful if sued, as already explained above.
We already had 4H kids training here, but they are covered by their associations, so was the performance dog club doing agility matches here.
They would send us a two day liability coverage as co-insured under theirs.
Best is to let your local attorney give you advice in your specific situation.
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I mean, there’s degrees… I don’t think a waiver covers everything but there is an amount of inherent risk present. If metal pitchforks especially were slung around willy nilly, I’d be mad, and would expect the overall quality of care to be below what I would pay for anyway. But if the tools are neatly against the doorway and the doorway is plenty wide enough? I wouldn’t do it that way myself, but it’s not out of the ordinary. Same with groundskeeping, these things need to happen on a regular basis, that’s up to you to work around.
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The spookiest place i haul into is deathly quiet during the day when all of the horses are turned out. The attached indoor is enclosed save for 30’ openings on the short sides, so there’s a wall about 5’ tall then it’s open. My horses and I are both routinely surprised to suddenly see someone walking by, or the like. We are in this quiet zone tada THE WORLD still exists.
I’d rather have someone running a wood chipper listening to Rush than ride in the cone of silence.
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Last month we had tree maintenance. The retired broodies showed the young un’s to stick around because the guy in the cherry picker tosses yummy acorns.
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I think this varies based on where you are. I boarded at a barn for a long time where the farrier absolutely requested - pretty strongly - that mowing not take place when he was out there. He was always there on the same day of the week, owners weren’t required (or even desired to be present), and we all needed him.
Some types of noise I’m used to getting advance notice of - power washing, changing lights requiring ladders in the arena, etc. I appreciate that tremendously because those types of rare things may not be necessary or possible to acclimate a horse to, and it gives riders a chance to adjust their schedule and avoid wasting time coming out to the barn at the wrong time. I know I’ve been frustrated (not with anyone, obviously) to arrive at the barn and get tacked up, only to have a terrible lightning thunderstorm with high wind come through and everyone ends up deciding to go home.
Mowing and weed earring have always just happened when they happen. I think those things are important to acclimate a horse to, because they happen so frequently that you can’t avoid it. I do think that if I were riding a difficult young horse, I’d sure appreciate a heads up. I appreciate it when people let you know when they’re opening/closing the big barn door, partially because my horse doesn’t have an issue with it now but that kind of thing startled me and I don’t want to do that and create an issue. If I know it’s coming, I don’t startle.
If the property maintenance is poor, then I’d avoid boarding there to avoid having a horse get caught up in something and hurt. Most of what I know about that sort of thing, I learned from my vet. He’s always been quite a stickler about a safe area for the horse.
Personally, wherever I am, I’m surprised by how few people are paranoid about leaving the halter on the x ties.
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It this riding outside?
I tend to still ride inside if there is a storm outside.
Good chance to work on concentration in a less than ideal ring.
Inside.
Sometimes I ride inside during a storm. If the winds are high and the rain is hitting the metal barn roof hard, I get anxious about the storm. It really just depends on how bad it is. If it’s bad enough, it seems like a lot of people back it up not so much because of horse spookiness, but because they don’t like being out under the noisy metal roof during a bad storm.
Of course, there was the time we were having our lesson inside during a late evening storm. The power went out and it was suddenly pitch black. Thankfully nobody was jumping at that very moment! 
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