Storeowner rallies ranchers against rustling, burglaries

MADRY, Mo. -- Farmers and property owners in rural Barry County who say burglaries and cattle rustling are on the rise plan to set up a protection association aimed both at deterring thieves and warding off a modern legal peril: liability if they hurt a criminal.

The idea came to Dale Horner, owner of the Madry Store, after he starting sleeping in his business to keep burglars away and as stories mounted from his rancher customers about thieves taking cattle, farm equipment and anything else they could find.

Horner's store is a fixture in the rural community of Madry, about 37 miles southwest of Springfield.

"All the farmers come in here. They tell you and you hear about a calf missing there, a couple head missing from a herd here," Horner said.

At the same time, drug-motivated burglaries are also on the rise, Horn said. Thieves broke into his storage shed seven weeks ago. Horn said he has slept in his store every night since and three times so far has chased off burglars in the middle of the night.

"Sooner or later somebody is going to catch somebody in their house or store or whatever and there's going to be an altercation," he said.

That's what got him thinking about liability issues. Horner and his wife Leslie, a real estate agent, talked with lawyers and were told about several cases in which thieves were hurt during crimes and successfully sued the property owners, winning money from their victims.

The answer Horner came up with is creating a limited liability corporation called the Madry Ranchers Protection Association.

Besides acting as a neighborhood watch group and posting signs aimed at deterring thieves, the association would act as a liability shield for its members.

Individual members would pay dues and be organized as employees. That way the association could assume liability in case a member hurt a would-be thief, limiting any claims to the amount of dues, rather than the member's own assets, Horner said.

"The whole thing is deterrence. We don't want any altercations here. We would like them (the thieves) to quit and go away," he said.

Barry County prosecutor Johnnie Cox said trespassers have fewer rights to liability claims than guests or business visitors on a property but added that the concern is not baseless.

"It is not a far-fetched concern," Cox said.