The New York Court of Appeals' recent decision in Bard v. Jahnke is an extremely interesting example of how the Court followed the doctrine of stare decisis even though the result left the plaintiff with no remedy (see prior post). The appeal involved an incident in which the plaintiff was attacked by a bull at a dairy farm at which the plaintiff was working. The owner of the bull allowed the bull to roam free at the dairy farm and encountered no prior incidents regarding the bull. The owner hired a non-party to work on the dairy farm in which the bull was housed and that non-party asked the plaintiff to assist him in the work. On the day of the incident, the owner did not know that the plaintiff was going to work in the dairy farm.
Because the bull had not shown prior vicious behavior and was allowed to roam freely without prior incident in the dairy farm, the Court applied the following common law rule: the owner of a domestic animal who either knows or should have known of that animal's vicious propensities will be held liable for the harm the animal causes as a result of those propensities. Vicious propensities include the propensity to do any act that might endanger the safety of the persons and property of others in a given situation. A read of the Court's recent case applying this rule is helpful for background: Collier v. Zambito.
The heart of the appeal concerned whether an owner of a domestic animal, which the owner does not know or have reason to know to be abnormally dangerous, is nonetheless liable if he or she intentionally causes the animal to do harm, or is negligent in failing to prevent harm. The Court refused to recognize this "enhanced duty" rule and, therefore, the plaintiff was unable to recover against the owner of the bull. Judge R. Smith's Dissenting Opinion discusses some interesting points as to the Court's refusal to adopt the "enhanced duty" rule and its continued embrace of its long-standing rule regarding animal attacks.
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