OklahomaHorses Magazine March 2022

March/April 2022 • OklahomaHorses 23 Lindsay Bippus Real Estate Broker / Owner 12342 E. 86th St. N. | Owasso 74055 (918) 706-3857 dreammakerrealtyok.com Looking to buy or sell a horse property in the greater Owasso area? Hand the reins to Lindsay Bippus at DreamMaker Realty, Owasso’s equine property specialist! interaction that you have with a client or customer should be generating some paper trail. This might seem daunting, but once you get in the habit of it, it is easy, and it can keep you out of trouble — literally. The records themselves might absolve you altogether, and if they don’t absolve you, but you operate a corporation or limited liability company, proper records will keep the claimant from piercing the corporate veil and asserting claims against your personal assets. By way of example, if you teach lessons on schooling horses or own and operate the boarding facility where people ride their own horses, it is advisable to deploy an Equine Activities Liability Waiver, Assump- tion of Risk, and Indemnity Agreement to insulate you from liability in case a student or boarder gets hurt while riding. But having someone sign such a docu- ment is useless if you do not maintain those records properly. You need to hang onto a copy of all such signed agreements for at least as long as it would take the statute of limitations to run out on any incident the document deals with. It is for this reason that records need to be kept in a consistent manner so that when you need them, they are accessible. CLARIFY TERMS OF AGREEMENT Another such scenario in which records are important can be seen in the following hypothetical example. A client accuses a clinician of allegedly failing to adhere to the terms of an agreement between them. The client felt aggrieved because of not having received the advanced training entitled to per the contract and thus was not granted an accreditation. The accelerated training and accred- itation were detailed in the marketing materials and referenced in the agreement the person signed when signing up for the clinic. The clinician’s position was that the additional training was dependent on the client’s aptitude and progress during the clinic and that the accreditation had to be earned, in the same way a student is not entitled to attend higher-level courses or ultimately be granted a degree from a university simply because of having paid tuition. In the end, the clinician prevailed, but the defense of the allegations depended on records kept for past clinics. With those records, which were kept consistently in a businesslike manner and were accessible, there was a long documented history which demonstrated that attendees were not enti- tled to the advanced training or commen- dation simply because they had paid for the clinic. Those records allow the clinician to prevent the piercing of the corporate veil and demonstrate established business practices, proving that the decision did not go beyond the basic clinic work and was not an arbitrary one. The specific type of records you should keep depends on your personal business model. Having a system for keeping records will help keep your employees or associates accountable and on task, which generally promotes better work habits. As noted above, basic accounting records are necessary for tax purposes and to ensure that your operational efficiency is always improving. Beyond that, any agreement entered into with any customer or client should be reduced to writing and archived in such a way that you can retrieve it for reference at a moment’s notice. The old saying goes, “Verbal agreement is not worth the paper it’s written on.” Well, a written contract that is not available for reference at a critical time is worth just about as much! My best advice is to assemble the neces- sary business templates, keep them at your disposal, and have a system in place to col- lect and file records for all of your critical transactions. AdamM. Trenk, Esq., is licensed to practice law in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky. He is a part- ner at Rose LawGroup pc (www.RoseLawGroup. com) , headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and with an office in Sulphur, Oklahoma. As an attorney, he practices equine law, strategic development, transactional matters, conflict resolution, and government relations. He is an avid horseman and active in the equine commu- nity. Adam Trenk can be contacted by e-mail at ATrenk@RoseLawGroup.como r by telephone at 602-402-3335. Like himon Facebook at www. facebook.com/EquineAttorneys. Follow himon InstaGram@theLawHorse.