Background
Frank Santana was operating a horse-drawn sickle mower on his pasture while Janey Shafer videoed him. After finishing the mowing pass, Santana dismounted and asked Shafer to hold the horses by a lead rope while he raised and secured the sickle bar. The sickle bar unexpectedly dropped to the ground, spooking the horses. The horses moved backward, then lurched forward after Shafer yelled “Whoa,” causing her to fall. The steel wheel of the mower ran over her and dragged her several feet, resulting in catastrophic spinal cord injuries that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She spent two weeks in intensive care and more than three months in a rehabilitation hospital, with medical expenses exceeding $700,000.
Shafer filed a personal injury suit against Santana seeking $18.2 million in damages. Her expert, Everett Kenoyer — an 82-year-old with 70 years of experience with draft horses and sickle mowers — opined that Santana operated the equipment dangerously: the mower was heavily rusted, the safety rod was not properly secured, the horses were insufficiently trained, and Shafer should never have been positioned in front of the horses. The Madison County district court granted summary judgment in Santana’s favor, finding him immune under the Iowa Domesticated Animal Activities Act, Iowa Code ch. 673. The court of appeals reversed on the recklessness exception, finding Kenoyer’s expert opinion created a genuine issue of material fact. Santana sought further review.
The Iowa Supreme Court granted further review to decide two questions: whether Santana’s conduct at the time of the injury fell within the Act’s immunity for “driving a domesticated animal,” and whether the evidence was sufficient to raise a jury question on the recklessness exception to that immunity.
The Court’s Holding
The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously vacated the court of appeals decision and reinstated the district court’s dismissal. On the first question, the court held that Santana was engaged in the domesticated animal activity of “driving” within the meaning of Iowa Code § 673.1(3)(a) at the time of the accident. The court clarified that “driving” is a term of art in the equine community meaning the activity of controlling an equine harnessed to a nonmotorized vehicle — and that the activity does not pause or end merely because the operator briefly stops the horses to perform an intermediate task. Because the horses remained harnessed to the sickle mower while Santana attempted to secure the sickle bar before driving the team back to the barn, he was still engaged in the covered activity. Shafer was, at minimum, a “spectator” in the vicinity of that activity, and her injuries resulted from the inherent risks of domesticated animal activities, including an animal’s unpredictable reaction to a sudden loud noise.
On the recklessness exception, the court held that Kenoyer’s expert materials failed to raise a genuine issue of material fact. Iowa law sets a high bar for recklessness, requiring proof that the defendant intentionally performed an unreasonable act in disregard of a known or obviously known risk so great as to make harm highly probable — an extreme departure from ordinary care, not merely a bad judgment call. The court found that Santana was never deposed, leaving no evidence that he was aware of the specific risks Kenoyer identified. Santana had limited experience with the sickle mower (only three or four prior uses) and, according to Shafer’s own expert, “did not know what he was doing.” That framing placed the conduct squarely in ordinary negligence, not recklessness. The risks Kenoyer identified — a rusty mower, an improperly secured safety rod, insufficiently trained horses — were the kind of risks only obvious to experts in hindsight, not to an ordinary person in the moment.
The court further found that Kenoyer’s opinions did not establish that harm was highly probable to follow. The court noted that Shafer had held the same horses in a similar manner earlier that afternoon without incident, and the chain of events that caused her injuries was too contingent and interwoven to support a finding that Santana consciously disregarded a near-certain risk of catastrophic harm.
Key Takeaways
- Under the Iowa Domesticated Animal Activities Act, the activity of “driving” a harnessed team is construed broadly and encompasses brief pauses in the activity (such as stopping to secure equipment) — liability does not turn on whether the animals were moving at the precise moment of injury.
- Expert opinions can support a recklessness finding at summary judgment, but only if they establish that the defendant intentionally disregarded a known or obviously known risk — opinions showing dangerous or unsafe conditions without evidence of the defendant’s subjective awareness fall short and support only a negligence claim.
- The absence of deposition testimony from a defendant can be fatal to a plaintiff’s recklessness claim when the record otherwise contains no evidence of the defendant’s conscious awareness of the specific risks that caused the injury.
- Iowa’s Domesticated Animal Activities Act reflects a legislative policy choice to immunize negligent animal owners for injuries arising from the inherent unpredictability of animals, even when the resulting injuries are catastrophic — courts are obligated to apply that immunity as written.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces just how difficult it is to pierce statutory animal activity immunity in Iowa through the recklessness exception. By clarifying that “driving” is a term of art encompassing the full arc of a harnessed-animal activity rather than only moments of active movement, the court significantly broadens the scope of immunity and forecloses arguments that a temporary stop breaks the chain of protected conduct. Attorneys advising plaintiffs injured in farm or equine settings must carefully assess whether the facts can support a genuine recklessness theory — not merely dangerous conditions or inexperienced operators — before proceeding to litigation, as the immunity is designed in part to prevent the costs of trial from ever being incurred.
The decision also sends a practical signal about litigation strategy: the failure to depose the defendant left an evidentiary void that no expert report could fill on the critical question of the defendant’s subjective awareness. In statutory immunity cases where recklessness is the only viable path to recovery, plaintiffs’ counsel should treat the defendant’s deposition as indispensable.