Law Office of Nancy Moïse Haws, PLLC

12/07/2022

Virginia Tech released its equestrian helmet study today. Take a minute and see where your helmet landed! Remember, helmets need to be replaced at a minimum every 5 years, and that’s if properly stored. If involved in a fall, it’s one and done.

We only have one noggin. Make wise decisions and wear a helmet every time.

Virginia Tech Helmet Ratings - Football helmets have been tested to evaluate their ability to reduce brain injury risk.

08/18/2022

Meet , my 2021 adopted New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program . He raced for ten years! I highly recommend New Vocations and if not in their service area, suggest seeking out organizations affiliated with the Standardbred Transition Alliance. Placement agencies like New Vocations have the structure for follow up and experience with agreements, offering great success. Congratulations New Vocations on celebrating 30 years of rehoming and retraining Standardbreds like Ziggy and Thoroughbreds after their racing careers.

I still take pause to wrap my head around being old enough to remember when there were few with liability insurance let alone waivers, no practical helmets, just hard plastic shells with silk men’s hat lining akin to my Grandfather’s fedora, and exterior of velvet, and $2 entry fees for the hunter show classes! The fellas at the track borrow forms, if they use them at all, and avoid attorneys, many still preferring the hand shake deals, but the other sports that rely on amateurs and hobbiest, have turned to a consumer model and mentality.

Things go wrong. It’s why everyone needs insurance now. Agents just tick boxes and don’t have much to do with claims, so they may make it sound easy, but it’s not. Insurance is merely a contract with specific details that builds a map for their claims adjusters to side on what IS NOT covered.

Gone are the days of a handshake in many disciplines. The path to litigating disputes is littered with the bones of broken promises by and escalated misunderstandings between former friends and colleagues.

Take time to hammer out the details and get them in writing. Borrowed forms to protect what is often literally built with your blood sweat and tears is akin to thinking every horse is suitable to every handler, rider, driver and discipline. If not in Kentucky, check your state bar association for an equine law section to find an attorney that understands your situation.

02/01/2021

How old is your helmet? Is it time for a new one? The Snell Foundation, which makes Safety Standards for all sorts of helmets, recommends riding helmets be replaced every 5 year. Not only that, helmets are only good for one major fall and then need to be replaced irrespective of their age. Of course, safety first should always be observed particularly when you consider the reason why we wear helmets. You can have multiple helmets, but you only have ONE HEAD.

After years of alternating hot and cold weather, getting stored on an old hat-stand in the garage, being dropped numerous times and suffering a fall or two, your helmet might look okay, but that’s only superficial. Everything deteriorates over time: the glue, stitching that binds the lining or holds the buckles on the chin strap, the inner polystyrene liner or the outer shell, the plastic shell too. The sun’s UV rays to rain and snow, body heat, sweat, bug and spf spray, whether your helmet is stored in temperature controlled or suffers the extreme heat and cold fluctuations, all impact on the overall condition of your horse riding helmet.

The only exception to replacing every five years is to replace it immediately after one fall involving your head.

Your horse riding helmet interior is made of polystyrene foam liner that is made to collapse on impact. That’s it’s job. It helps you bounce back. Helmets often have a black interior, but it’s the same polystyrene that is white foam used to make to go trays of food and cups for drinks, packaging in boxes for most appliances, and or those tiny beans in bean-bags. You may have noticed that this type of foam can easily get compressed, and it doesn’t bounce back like memory foam. Polystyrene does not return to its original shape.

It is for this reason that all types of helmets can only take one major fall. During a fall involving your head, the polystyrene foam will smash (so your head doesn’t) on impact. Since it doesn’t revert to its original shape, and this may not visibly show on inspection, you must replace your helmet.

Your horse riding helmet will only be as good as you take care of it:

- store it properly: out of direct sunlight and in a temperature controlled environment. Failing to do so reduces the useful life of your helmet. This means: do not store in your hot car or horse trailer.
- keep it clean by laundering the liner, if removable, and using a mild detergent inside and out.
- look over the helmet for chips and cracks.
- keep the chin-strap in good repair. Make sure it is not frayed, and it clips tightly.

So, go look at your helmets. It’s a new year, is it time for a new helmet?

11/13/2020

It bears repeating, wear a helmet, every time.

11/12/2020

A good day out means a lot of different things to different horseman. No matter your chosen discipline, may you have nothing but good days this fall!
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09/02/2020

“A pony is a childhood dream. A horse is an adulthood treasure.”

- Rebecca Carroll, author

06/14/2020

A global pandemic struck our Standardbred community early on, and the sport responded. We don’t get second chances to get this right. Protect your stakeholders and meet your duty of care to prevent foreseeable harm. Businesses get sued over a slip and fall, adding a deadly disease, one with growing documented damage to vital organs of survivors, is not going to help. Take the time to prepare a Covid-19 Response plan for your business, so that it is communicated with staff and other stakeholders. There are legal compliance issues for local, state, and federal government, any sanctioning body for equine related events, as well as exposure to liability. Don’t risk doing what others do, and have to follow them to memorial services, send get well cards to your stakeholders, and later, into court to pay for that lack of preparedness. Be conservative because the risk isn’t yours alone to bear. Be sure to get it as right as you can the first time.
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06/04/2020

If you know of someone in need of legal representation for exercising their 1st Amendment rights, whether the Fourth Estate journalist or protester, I am representing pro bono along with experienced First Amendment attorneys. Please DM me for more information. I am one attorney with no staff to keep my overhead low so legal fees don’t keep someone from getting the help they need. I have no staff so the information shared in the DM is not for social media but has a phone number to a call bank of law students to help with the call load, but for those known to need First Amendment legal help in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. You can share this post. I have for ten years helped people, with more ideas and hustle than access to capital, start their passion as a business. I am finding it is these same people who stand for equal justice under the law. It’s something we all all for.

05/08/2020

We are fortunate that Governor Beshear has demonstrated your leadership and statesmanship during this difficult time. I know many aren’t liking these measures. I appreciate their perspective. I do. There is the law, and there is how business gets done. We all have a different tolerance to risk. The cost of that risk isn’t born by a single individual nor business, and decisions made now may come back have damage beyond a Covid-19 infection.

In absence of a national plan and federal support, has saved Kentucky lives. It now rests on each of us as we move forward. The state may reopen, but not us, the consumer.

Folks forget that consumer confidence is at an all time low. State action can reopen businesses, but not all businesses will reopen, and not all customers will come back yet.

We don’t have an anti-viral treatment to reduce the mortality and the long term damage to the lungs, heart, brain and kidneys. We don’t have reliable and universal antibody testing. We don’t have reliable and universal Covid-19 testing, nor the tracking of contacts, notification and paid sick leave so they can afford to comply with 14 day quarantine. We don’t have paid sick leave, and we need that period.

These are the things that make reopening safeR, not safe. A VACCINE is what makes it safe. Until then, hand washing, no face touching, mask wearing, social distancing and staying at home save essential trips and yes, work as UI is discontinued as we reopen, is about all we will be doing. Let the fools rush in like the red shirts on Star Trek.

There is a reason Senator McConnell has reducing/eliminating the burden liability for companies. As the law stands, companies owe an increased duty of care to their employees, vendors, and business patrons for the foreseeable harm caused by the spread of Covid-19. Some may argue that it is not a presumed risk on entry, but would you bet your business on that being right? It’s the same kind of liability that took down big to***co. Senator McConnell is wrong to do so, since OSHA guidelines for Covid-19 are recommendations, and enforcement of state guideliness will prove difficult, the potential for liability is one of the few remaining safeguards for public health to hold businesses that fail to do the right thing, accountable. There will be a fight in DC over this issue, and it’s best to plan like the laws as they are will stand.

Follow CDC and state guidelines, and make sure you can implement them institutionally wide before you unlock those doors to staff and customers.

- Wash hands frequently.
- Wear a mask*.
- Don’t touch your face.
- Practice social distancing of 6 feet apart*.
- and any other industry specific regulations

* masks become imperative for those within six feet.

For companies seeking to reopen, remember, you have an increased duty of care to your employees, vendors, business patrons and public for the foreseeable harm of the spread of Covid-19. We already will have dramatically reduced demand by consumers. Plan your reopening to be prepared for an initial rise in customers, but also be conservative in your income projections because of reduced consumer confidence. Err on the side of conservative precautions to prevent that harm and protect your business assets, and quite possibly, your personal ones, because any breach of that duty won’t be covered by your business insurance. Posting on social media how your business won’t comply only gives the opposing counsel evidence of your malfeasance and recklessness. Do not make the mistake of confusing a political dislike of measures with a risky business decision. Covid-19 may not be fatal to you personally, but that mistake may be fatal to your business and livelihood. You should also check with your legal department of Franchisor for their risk assessment and policy before posting your personal opinions. It may impact their decision as to whether you are in breach of your agreement with them.

OSHA Covid-19 guidelines can be found here:
https://www.osha.gov/Publications/OSHA3990.pdf

Kentucky reopening information can be found here:
HealthatWork.ky.gov

04/24/2020

Looking for labor law information as an employer or employer? Here is a good resource:

04/05/2020

Thank you.

Thank you to each of you keeping your businesses and stables compliant with current protocols.

Thank you for being vigilant in honorably practicing the golden rule.

This isn’t going to be over in weeks. This is our normal for a while is my take. Until we have the PPEs, the ventilators, the beds, the second and third wave of trained staff, which is limited since it takes 3-11 years to educate and train medical staff, and complicating things, we had a nursing shortage as it was, all of this as our last line of defense to hold the course. The field hospitals being built are for overflow of hospitals in rural communities and cities. This is our normal.

We need treatment and vaccines as our first line of defense and that takes time. Until we do, all we have is comfort meds and keep patients breathing so their bodies can fight it off. Let that sink in. Anyone having heard rattle of rales of someone struggling for air, that’s what Covid-19 patients with shortness of breath it causes can sound like.

We don’t yet have a vaccine to give herd immunity that shuts down the spread of this disease, without which, the only way is by social distancing properly. By properly, that 6 feet rule is meant for when you’re passing folks at the grocery or refueling your car for your essential job. It’s not a license to spread the lawn chairs apart and hang out with neighbors.

After all this? There is no return to normal. None of us will survive this unscathed. This is our normal and we are all in different stages of grieving the loss of the old normal and familiar routines.

For those unfamiliar, the Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, postulates a series of emotions experienced by terminally ill patients prior to death, or people who have lost a loved one, wherein the five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

It’s those who are in denial or bargaining that prolong these conservative measures.

“We can’t be doin’ that,” as Kentucky’s Governor oft says.

Have someone complaining? See folks easing off or never started taking precautions? Tell those in your life that absence of the virus impacting them isn’t proof of precautions not being necessary, but of precautions WORKING.

Be a good soldier and carry the jackass.