Illinois § 15

§ 15.

Participant's responsibility. It is recognized that equine activities are hazardous to participants, regardless of all feasible safety measures that can be taken. Each participant who engages in an equine activity expressly assumes the risk of and legal responsibility for injury, loss, or damage to the participant or the participant's property that results from participating in an equine activity, except in specific situations as set forth in Section 20, when the equine activity sponsor or equine professional may be held responsible. Each participant shall have sole individual responsibility for knowing the range of his or her own ability to manage, care for, and control a particular horse or perform a particular equine activity, and it shall be the duty of each participant to act within the limits of the participant's own ability, to maintain reasonable control of the particular horse or horses at all times while participating in an equine activity, to heed all posted warnings, to perform equine activities only in an area or in facilities designated by the horseman, and to refrain from acting in a manner that may cause or contribute to the injury of anyone. Each participant, or parent or guardian of a minor participant, may execute a release assuming responsibility for the risks of engaging in equine activities. The release shall give notice to the participant, or parent or guardian, of the risks of engaging in equine activities, including (i) the propensity of an equine to behave in dangerous ways that may result in injury to the participant, (ii) the inability to predict an equine's reaction to sound, movements, objects, persons, or animals, and (iii) the hazards of surface or subsurface conditions. A release shall remain valid until expressly revoked by the participant or, if a minor, the parent or guardian. (Source: P.A. 89-111, eff. 7-7-95.)