The horse trading ended in a lawsuit. In the buyer's opinion, the horse did not correspond to what the seller had promised.
Woman bought his young daughter a horse. When the animal was sick and did not know the things described in the sales notice, a legal dispute began. It turned out to be expensive for the horse seller.
The matter was discussed both in the district court and the court of appeal.
The buyer and seller made a horse trade in 2021, when Finland and the world were hit by the corona pandemic. The horse trade was brisk.
The horse the woman bought was a 12-year-old Lithuanian coldblood. The price of the animal was 6,900 euros. The mare had only been with the seller a couple of weeks before the deal was made. It had been brought to Finland from Lithuania. The horse was said to be basic trained, jump bars and know the easiest level of dressage.
The woman went to see the horse at the stable with her daughter and a friend. Daughter and friend test rode the mare. The buyer had been told that the horse's health is good and that it has no medical background.
The buyer would have liked to go home and think about buying the horse, but according to him, he was told that there are other buyers in the queue and the horse will go elsewhere if he does not decide on the purchase right away.
According to the buyer, the horse was promised the right to exchange. The deals were done.
A few a day after leaving the shops, the horse started coughing. Longevity developed from the trouble. The mare's legs, on the other hand, were found to have fluid swelling, bone spurs and scars.
The problems affected how the horse could be used. The horse also didn't know the things it was supposed to. According to the buyer, the horse was mostly a “woodsman” that could walk in the terrain and sometimes trot.
Another horse had to be bought for the daughter.
According to the buyer, the mare was perfect in nature and the kindest horse in the world, but that didn't make up for the fact that the horse didn't know anything.
Buyer demanded in the district court of Varsinais-Finland that the seller pay him a 4,000 euro price reduction. The seller demanded that the lawsuit be dismissed. Both require each other to pay their legal costs.
The horse was not subject to a purchase inspection before the sale was concluded. According to the buyer, the seller had said at the test riding event that the veterinarian had checked the horse two weeks earlier.
According to the seller, the buyer had misunderstood the situation and only a “basic check” had been done on the horse during teeth grinding, where the horse had been looked at from above.
The seller justified the horse's skills by the fact that it had been used in Lithuania mainly in the countryside and as a puller for hay carts. According to him, the skill level of the animal is already low when it comes to a cold-blooded horse that has been working in agriculture. According to the seller, the horse knew what was promised. According to him, the buyer's daughter's skills were not enough to bring out the horse's skills.
According to the district court, the seller's appeal to the girl's lack of riding skills could not succeed in court, because the horse had been sold as a first horse or suitable for a riding school. According to the district court, the buyer had the right to trust that the horse has basic training and understands certain things.
According to the buyer, he would have been ready to exchange or return the horse during the first month or half a year, but since then an emotional bond had formed with the horse, and the exchange was no longer relevant. The matter was discussed when the court considered the amount of the price reduction demanded by the buyer.
The seller said that he had not offered an exchange because, in his view, there were no grounds for it. According to him, the buyer had been aggressive and made false claims. The district court, on the other hand, considered that the right of exchange had been agreed upon between the buyer and the seller, and the reason stated by the seller was not an acceptable basis for not complying with the agreement.
In its ruling in 2022, the district court held that the seller had given the buyer incorrect information about the pre-sale veterinary inspection, the horse's skill level and the right to exchange. In addition, the seller had neglected to draw the buyer's attention to the problems in the horse's feet.
In addition, the horse's chronic cough remained the responsibility of the seller.
The district court ordered the seller to pay the buyer a price reduction of 2,900 euros. In addition, the seller had to pay the buyer's court costs of more than 15,000 euros.
Seller appealed the verdict to the Court of Appeal and demanded that the district court's verdict be overturned.
The Court of Appeal of Turku stated that the seller is not responsible for the horse's cough. The Court of Appeal reduced the price reduction to 2,400 euros. The court of appeals reduced the buyer's court costs from the court proceedings to 11,000 euros.
The seller must reimburse the buyer's court costs of 7,500 euros for the court proceedings. The Court of Appeal gave its decision in January.
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