Farm volunteer head-butted by musk ox wins $10K settlement

Sept. 13--PALMER -- Four years after an ornery musk ox head-butted a 20-year-old Mormon missionary at a tourist attraction outside Palmer, the young victim has been awarded a $10,000 settlement.

Michael Simkins was originally hoping for $200,000 from the Musk Ox Farm to cover medical expenses, lost income and other damages from physical and emotional distress, according to settlement briefs filed in the case.

The farm, operated by the nonprofit Muskox Development Corp., had offered $7,500.

A Palmer Superior Court judge signed off on the $10,000 settlement last week, according to a one-page document that's part of the massive musk ox lawsuit file at the Palmer courthouse.

The butting occurred, Simkins said in a sworn deposition, on his first day doing service as a volunteer at the Musk Ox Farm just off the Glenn Highway in late September 2010. The Utah man had been assigned through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to a mission in the Palmer-Wasilla area.

He was bending over as he scooped grain into a bucket 2 or 3 feet from a fence when the animal came at him.

"(M)y attention was directed to the task at hand, and I had no reason to expect that a musk ox would charge the fence, pushing it into me," said Simkins, now 24.

He filed the civil personal injury lawsuit two years later -- just within the time allowed by the state's statute of limitations.

After the incident, Simkins suffered anxiety, headaches and seizures and lost the ability to do some work tasks, according to a settlement brief filed by his attorney. A filing from the farm's attorney notes the seizure occurred 18 months after the incident.

Along with such disagreements on the main points of the suit, the court file contains the usual assortment of documents -- witness lists, jury instructions -- but also a few that show how different this particular lawsuit was.

There's a doctor's diagnosis of "Musk ox head-butt trauma" plus individual photos and personality profiles of some of the 77 animals that live on the farm: the vivacious but bossy Medusa; Phoenix, a "grain hog" who follows people around the pasture; and Merle, the slightly spooky steer.

The case of the missionary head-butted by a mad musk ox seems funny on the surface. But the farm is a nonprofit that operates on a slim budget, court and tax documents indicate. The most recent tax forms available on the GuideStar website show the farm netted $38,000 in revenues in 2012. The farm makes money selling musk ox yarn and clothing as well as charging admission.

The settlement amount would have been higher but the farm's insurer refused to cover the incident and the farm said it had limited assets, said Dale Walther, the Anchorage attorney who represented Simkins.

"If the insurance company had stepped up to the plate, it would have been quite a different case," Walther said Thursday.

But Musk Ox Farm attorney Bill Ingaldson, who took the case pro bono, said he felt confident the farm would have won had the lawsuit gone to trial and didn't necessarily view the settlement as a loss.

"It would have cost just as much to try the case," Ingaldson said.

Simkins didn't tell anyone at the farm about the incident, according to the settlement brief filed Sept. 4 by the nonprofit. The farm only found about about it two years later when the court complaint was served.

Both sides seemed to agree that Simkins was butted, and it's possible he sustained a concussion.

A Mat-Su doctor a couple of days after the head-butting did not find any evidence of a skull fracture, the farm's settlement brief says.

The Utah doctor who later diagnosed the "head-butt trauma" from that September day also acknowledged Simkins' medical history was "somewhat spotty" and it was "concerning" that the Valley doctor saw medical records indicating past concussions playing football.

Simkins had been a high school football player and played in an adult amateur league in hopes of getting a scholarship. He felt healthy enough several weeks after the head-butting to play a game, during which he separated his shoulder, according to the court documents.

The farm maintained that it had no liability because the musk oxen were livestock -- they have been milked and their "kiviut" or wool is spun into yarn -- raised in captivity, first in Fairbanks and then the Palmer location for 50 years. State statute "provides that participants in livestock activities assume the risk of injury or death caused by the livestock" unless gross negligence or reckless or intentional misconduct were involved, according to the settlement brief.

Mark Austin, who runs the farm as the executive director of the nonprofit, said in a deposition that musk oxen are not animals with a propensity to cause injury.