Case Analysis (Legal Methods) - Essay Example

The plaintiff sustained injuries as a result of the crash and attempted o claim compensation from the defendants on the grounds that they owed him a duty to ensure that the animals could not escape and get onto the highway where they might cause an accident. The area where the horses were kept did have a fence around them and it was not possible to reach a conclusion how the horses has managed to escape from the field. The fence had been flattened by the exiting horses and the judge came to the conclusion that the horses must have become frightened by someone or something and had bolted through the fence.

The judge came to this decision despite lack of any concrete proof that this might be the case on the basis that the horses had never attempted to escape previously. Initially the plaintiff asserted a claim in negligence and under the Animals Act 1971. The negligence claim failed on the grounds that the animals were usually docile and the fence under such circumstances was adequate for its purpose. Judge O’Malley felt that the defendants had maintained an adequate state of repair to the enclosure and that the fencing was not below the standard required of a ‘reasonably careful and prudent owner’.

It was therefore necessary for the plaintiff to rely on the strict liability for the damage under the Animals Act. Given that the defendants had been found not guilty of negligence the plaintiff had to rely on proving the horses were dangerous. The difficulty with this was that the horses were generally docile and had never previously escaped nor injured anyone. As the Act does not list horses as a dangerous species then the reliance was on Act which states "(2) Where damage is caused by an animal which does not belong to a dangerous species, a keeper of the animal is liable for the damage, except as otherwise provided by this Act, if-(a) the damage is of a kind which the animal,