Law Offices of Krysia Carmel Nelson, PLC

08/27/2026

The Court of Public Opinion

Let’s face it, our life is digitized. With the proliferation of technology, we are in constant and unfettered communication with a vast network of people, businesses, and AI – smart devices, messaging, apps, email, social media. It has never been so easy to share a thought with an audience. We used to describe the speedy spread of gossip and inflammatory rhetoric with reference to wildfires, but that metaphor is now as outdated as rotary dial phones, landlines and fax machines. We are in the “blink of an eye” or “speed of light” information era.

This ease and speed of communication has created a hostile environment for civility and thoughtfulness, and fertile ground for sharing thoughts and ideas that are base, reactive, inconsiderate, mean-spirited, defamatory, unchecked, and in some cases criminal. Not all online content is negative, but the digital world has created space for a lot of unproductive and negative expression.

Our courts may leave much to be desired, but in theory they are a judicial system that affords parties a dispute resolution process that is “due” and “fair”. The system is built upon the principle of the “rule of law,” which rejects features of historically lawless societies such as lynch mobs, stocks and pillories, public hangings, whippings and executions. A civilized society doesn’t stone people or burn them at the stake. There are rules, and if one person is aggrieved by someone else’s violation of a rule, they can plead their cases to a judge who will decide who is right and dispense justice without turning punishment into a public spectacle.

I’m a lawyer, so I have literally and figuratively bought into this system. The problem is that this system of justice feels inaccessible to many people. Sometimes a potential client won’t hire me because I have told them they don’t have a case. Other times I have told them they don’t have a case worth paying me to pursue on their behalf. Litigation has gotten expensive and that makes it more out of reach for the average consumer than ever before. It’s also a slow process – the legal system is the opposite of instant gratification.

So now, more than ever, aggrieved individuals who are unable or unwilling to access our judicial system almost instinctively resort to the court of public opinion which, because of digitization, is universally accessible, inexpensive (free!), and provides almost instant gratification from friends and strangers alike who enthusiastically jump on almost any bandwagon they can find to validate whatever grievance is being aired.

I see it online everyday. Yesterday on NextDoor someone in my neighborhood posted “He should be kicked off UVA football….” I didn’t read the post, but what the heck? It pains me to see a post with pictures of a skinny horse being offered as proof that some barn owner is “clearly abusive” and to be avoided. “Warning” posts, like “stay away from this breeder”, or “stay away from this trainer,” are equally common place and equally upsetting. And that’s the point – the message is intended to be upsetting.

I also get a lot of calls from people who have been “targeted” online, seeking protection from the online lynch mob and begging for help to repair what they perceive to be damage to their reputation. They don’t like hearing that I can’t help them. But trying to practice law in the court of public opinion is pointless because no one can rationalize with a lynch mob. For that reason, I also discourage victims of such attacks from responding online.

I discourage clients and potential clients from airing their grievances on social media not just because they may inadvertently expose themselves to actual liability for defamation, but because communicating anything with defamatory intent is short sighted and socially problematic. Why? It’s bullying, and just because you can incite a mob to take your side doesn’t mean you should.

However wronged you may feel, bullying makes YOU the bad guy. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Our sport is currently operating in space where bullying behavior is not only discouraged, but sanctionable. And lynch mobs are notoriously impossible to control. Even when it is labeled as a “PSA” or warning, the deliberate publication of a (one-sided) statement about a matter in which one person is portrayed as the victim of another’s wrongdoing is tainted by defamatory intent and fraught with peril. Bullying is neither defensible nor excusable, and dressing it up like a crossing guard doesn’t make it socially acceptable. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then guess what?

Public shaming is not a legitimate form of self-help. No one likes a bully (except other bullies).

Videographic illustration, for your entertainment:

English Subtitles

11/28/2025

Parents! Calling all parents of horse crazy kids who sense participation in the sport will require spending the equivalent of college tuition. All we want is for our kid(s) to be happy, but to those uninitiated to the sport, it seems like…a lot.

Call me. Maybe you don’t feel like you actually need a lawyer. Maybe it feels funny to talk to a lawyer when you aren’t having any kind of a dispute with anyone. Maybe you feel like you should be able to talk to your kids trainer about how leases work and what’s involved with the purchase of a horse…but think of it this way: you are being asked to make a big financial investment, and spending real money will ALWAYS involve legalities that a non lawyer won’t appreciate. When you buy a house, you have a realtor show you properties, but you have a lawyer close the deal. What’s the difference between a horse and a house? One letter. U or R …. Either way U R going to spend a small fortune that can either be the dream of a lifetime or a heartache inducing money pit.

I mostly represent trainers. But increasingly I have been fielding questions from financially savvy parents who are uninitiated to the sport. There is no shame in asking questions and (unlike your kids trainer) I’m not invested in selling you a bill of goods.

For years, I have offered flat fee consultations to lawyers who practice outside of this area of law… pay for an hour of my time and pick my brain…ask me anything. And I can do that for you. I have been doing that for parents for years, actually, but lately I feel like the need is growing. I see the questions parents are crowdsourcing on social media…mostly good questions being met with a lot of authoritatively delivered but unsound answers. Not just about horse leases and purchases, but investing in horses, co-ownership, setting up LLCs, insurance, liability, risk management, commissions, tax, land use, pros and cons of boarding vs bringing the horse home. There’s been a lot of change in the sport in recent decades, and that has given rise to even more complexities that make your potential financial investment more precarious than ever. So even if you rode at some point in your past, you may no longer be as up to speed as you’d like to think.

I have taught in law school and professional (continuing education) settings. I’ve commercially published a legal newsletter focused on the horse industry and equestrian sport for over 30 years …so I have read and reported on just about every horse and horse sport related case that has come out during the tenure of my legal career. And I’ve been riding and showing and personally participating in horse sport for my entire life and I remember how my parents (my father more than my mother) really struggled to understand how to best support my horse habit within their financial means. Times have changed, but I remember all the questions my dad had when he read the first lease contract for a show horse he leased me the summer I was 16…and even what I learned that day was eye-opening.

Most trainers are good at what they do and knowledgeable horsemen. But they don’t have a legal education and they typically lack the ability to accurately articulate what are pretty complex legal concepts that arise in the context of equestrian sport. When my clients who are trainers have a question, they call me. You can too. A little education can go a long way.

The best way to reach me is to go to my website and submit an inquiry. It will come to me as a secure email and we can go from there. https://equestriansportslaw.com/contact-us/

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11/08/2025

Top Ten Trainer Tips To Avoid A Positive USEF Drug Test……

1. Avoid compounded medications. Yes, sometimes they are unavoidable. And yes, it is easier to buy the big tub of powder whatever (robaxin, for example) than to crush pills in a coffee grinder. But the compounding pharmacies can and do mess up dosages and ingredients, and by the time you get your notice of violation the container has been used up and thrown away, and you will be on the hook and unable to prove if the pharmacy made a mistake.

2. If you are using compounded robaxin, make sure whoever is medicating knows that they need to SHAKE THE CONTAINER every time. The robaxin settles at the bottom. I have seen more robaxin overages caused by an administration from a scoop at the bottom of an almost empty container…

3. Read all supplement labels and make sure you understand what every ingredient is. This sounds obvious, but apparently it is not. Most pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals will have more than one name, and sometimes the fancy sounding name looks better on a label but if they used the common name you’d realize right away that the product is not “show safe”. And there might be more not-show-safe products than show safe ones. Buyer beware. And, by the way, USEF is more than happy to review labels for you if you are unsure, and you aren’t giving up the ghost when you ask them for clarity.

4. Do not share horse show stalls. When a horse gets to a show, it should only get put in a stall with 100% fresh/new bedding, fresh hay and fresh water. Once it is at the show, it should only use that stall and no other horse should be allowed in that stall….not for even a minute. Make this a strict rule. It will still happen that a horse will get stuck in the wrong stall or a dirty stall, but if your staff and customers think it is a hard and fast rule, and see you lose your sh*t if it happens, then they will be diligent.

5. No dogs in horse stalls…not even for a minute. A medicated dog can contaminate a horse stall. Dogs can also pick up environmental contaminants and carry them (on their coats, paws and dog toys) into a stall. Do not underestimate the dog contaminant potential!

6. Responsibility for medicating horses should be assigned to one person and one person only. Beware the potential for grooms and customers wanting to be “helpful” and inadvertently double dosing or somehow otherwise screwing up your system.

7. Take feed buckets out of stalls by 8pm. Remove them. Dump them and wash them. Horses will leave medicated feed uneaten, morning feed gets dumped on top, and voila. if a horse tests positive for a medication that can be top dressing, USEF will always ask what time the horse was fed and when the buckets got taken out. Leaving the feed bucket overnight is just asking for an overage.

8. Treat medicated topicals the same way you treat orally administered medications, and do not give staff ready access to them or leave them in general circulation in grooming boxes. Almost any cream or ointment you get from a vet is going to have some kind of medication in it, and because many of these products will be compounded (sometimes even mixed up by the vets themselves) the ingredients won’t be listed. But a lot of that stuff has steroids in it and that’s the easiest way to get a dex overage…because if the horse gets a shot of dex and then some cream with dex gets applied to a wound or skin infection…voila, it’s over the limit. And because creams and ointments prescribed for one horse rarely get used up all the way, the leftover gets retained and used on some other horse. Scratches cream is the number one problem!!! If the stuff works like magic, it’s probably medicated, and don’t handle it casually.

9. Stalls are not human toilets. For the love of all that is holy, don’t let humans urinate in horse stalls. Not staff, not customers, no one, ever. Not just at shows…At home too!

10. Make sure you know when you need to file a med report….both as to the substance and as to the timing. This is trickier than ever now that you are supposed to file online and within a specific time window of administration (and sometimes there’s a poor internet connection). For example, Most of the cetirizine violations I see could have been avoided if the filing of the med report hadnt somehow been screwed up. And I wouldn’t necessarily rely on your vet to know the rules…I’ve heard lots of vets give out terrible advice 🤦‍♀️

I could go on and on. But these tips reflect the biggest problem areas. Even the most diligent trainers get foiled by a staff member or customer (or parent of a customer). Beware the well-meaning dad/ husband/boyfriend (sorry guys)…it’s great they want to be supportive and helpful, but OMG….that could be a post of its own. 🙈

02/26/2024

https://equestriansportslaw.com/houston-we-have-a-problem/

Houston, we have a problem. And I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks so…. There is little room at the shows for those of us who cannot afford the VIP experience and step up as sponsors. I can’t write a $5,000 check for anything without wincing. Tax time makes me cry. Paying the househol...