AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) – A Texas law protecting defendants does not apply to the wrongful death lawsuit filed after a ranch hand was apparently killed by the livestock he was tasked with herding.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled that way June 12 in the case of Raul Amparo Zuniga Ortiz, a 33-year-old worker who was found trampled in 2013 at a ranch in Fayette County. The court was asked whether the Texas Farm Animal Activity Act applied to the case, which would have limited liability for defendant Carmine Charolais Ranch.
“A ranch hand accidentally injured on the job by falling, by something falling on him, by equipment, by twisting his back or pulling a muscle — by almost anything — can sue his nonsubscriber employer and recover damages as long as he was not intoxicated,” Justice Nathan Hecht wrote.
“But he could not do so if the employer were protected by the Farm Animal Act. If the Act covered ranch hands, then it would operate to deny those employed by nonsubscribers of any remedy whatsoever for their injuries.”
In October 2013, Zuniga was asked to move 20 head of cattle while his employers were away running errands. He called them to confirm he should move the last three in the pen into the barn. Those three included a 2,000-pound bull.
Zuniga was told to move the three, but when his employers returned, they found his body behind the barn. The last three cattle were still in the pen.
A medical examiner determined the cause of death to be “blunt force and crush injuries” that were consistent with a large animal trampling the body.
The resulting lawsuit alleged the bull killed Zuniga, but the trial court granted summary judgment to the ranch under the Farm Animal Act, a law that has its genesis in a 1995 measure relating to injuries caused by horses.
In 2011, the state Legislature broadened the Equine Act and renamed it the Farm Animal Act, adding other animals.
Livestock examples relate to “shows,” the opinion says, and confine its application to shows, rides, exhibitions and competitions.
“The categories listed as examples do not suggest that ranchers should also be included,” Hecht wrote.
The decision will allow Zuniga’s family to continue with its lawsuit. Two justices dissented.
“The Act limits the liability of ‘any person,’ not particular categories of people, who are sued for injuries to a ‘participant in a farm animal activity,’ as the statute defines that phrase,” wrote Justice Jimmy Blacklock.
“The decedent in this case was ‘loading or unloading a farm animal belonging to another’ when the accident occurred, which makes him a ‘participant in a farm animal activity’ under the statutorily supplied definitions.
“If the Legislature wants the Act to have a narrower scope, it can amend the law. We should not attempt to remedy a perceived disconnect between a broadly worded statute and the narrow concerns presumed to have motivated its enactment. That is a legislative function.”