In a pair of gasp-inducing tragedies, two 13-year-old boys lost their lives a day apart on two separate farms offering haunted attractions. In both cases, the boys were staked out along a tractor-pulled wagon route, working to scare tour customers when they ended up under the wheels of the trailer. These horrific accidents throw into stark relief the importance of recognizing that every person who works on a farm may need to be treated like an employee which includes being given tasks appropriate to their age, effective training, safety instruction, and safeguards that protect their lives.
The news reports coming out of the Alexandria, Minnesota-based accident explain the incident like this: Alexander “Xander” Mick, the 13-year-old boy who died on Oct. 12 at a haunted hayride, was volunteering when the deadly incident occurred, officials say. The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office said Mick was a volunteer at the Harvest of Horror Haunted Hayride in St. Augusta when he was run over by a trolley wagon being pulled by a tractor. According to a press release, Mick’s job at the hayride was to frighten the riders being pulled through the cornfield area.
As farm educators, some of the hardest words we have to say during our presentations are, “God forbid, a volunteer could die on your farm. If this happens, the worst tends to happen.” Although we have zero evidence that anything will happen in the Harvest of Horror case, fatal accidents can start the fall of legal dominoes that have business-ending consequences.
As avid readers of Farm Commons’ material know, a for-profit business cannot have legal volunteers. For-profit businesses can only have employees. We also know that a person cannot be both a volunteer and an employee at the same time. Farms find themselves picking through these details because they need to know their legal obligations- the farm has a lot more obligations towards an employee, as compared to a member of the general public. Wage and hour rules, child labor laws, safety training, and safety standards all potentially apply to employees. Farms sometimes don’t realize that employment rules can and do apply to their “volunteers” until it’s too late. There couldn’t be anything worse to add to a fatal accident than legal complications, fines, and enforcement actions because the individual was actually an employee.
The world didn’t need another example of this happening, but it got one in a separate incident in the Chattanooga, TN area the day before the Minnesota accident. As the report hints, youthful misjudgment, miscommunication, and the nature of nighttime attractions all may have contributed to the sorrowful circumstances. Farm Commons has no information that any labor law violations will be investigated or that any charges would or could be brought in either of these cases. That being said, the potential exists for claims on employment grounds. Farmers need to be very careful of their obligations when operating attractions that rely on youths and volunteers. Read up on the distinctions between volunteers and employees in our Farmers Legal Guide to Intern and Volunteer Programs, or dive into state-specific rules for employees in our Selected Essentials in Farm Employment Law series.