Animal charity sued for £200k after swan spooked horse

A CHARITY worker is suing bosses for £200,000, claiming she suffered brain damage when a nervous cart horse she was riding for them bolted at sight of a swan and threw her.

- Richard Gittins

Sarah Ann Potterton's barrister claims Suffolk Punch draught horse Alfie was unusually liable to scare and it was not safe for her to be on him.

The Otter Trust's lawyers deny Alfie was "abnormally" jittery and say the 40-year-old had previously ridden him.

Galloped

In High Court papers, Giles Mooney KC, for Ms Potterton, said she ran the coffee shop at the charity's nature reserve in Bungay, Suffolk, and had been helping her sister Emma Marshall with Alfie and brother Yale for about a year.

Trust chiefs decided to exhibit the horses at the Suffolk Show in May 2019 with the sisters riding the brothers "for good publicity".