Clark v. Brings

Decision Date27 June 1969
Docket NumberNo. 41289,41289
Citation284 Minn. 73,169 N.W.2d 407
PartiesJeanette Clotilde CLARK, Appellant,VS v. Keith M. BRINGS, et al., Respondents.
CourtMinnesota Supreme Court

Syllabus by the Court

1a. Under the common law 'scienter action' for an injury inflicted by an animal, a cat, though it may be kept as a house pet, is a domestic animal, and a plaintiff must prove both the animal's dangerousness and its owner's knowledge of the fact before he can recover.

1b. Minn.St. 347.22, making owners strictly liable under certain circumstances for injuries inflicted by their dogs, does not implicitly extend the same liability to the owners of cats.

2. In the case at bar, appellant's evidence of the cat's dangerousness and of respondent owners' knowledge of the fact was insufficient to go to the jury, and a directed verdict was properly ordered in the scienter cause of action.

3. The evidence here was similarly insufficient to go to the jury in appellant babysitter's cause of action for respondent employers' alleged negligence in failing to provide her with a safe place to work by leaving her in the company of a dangerous cat.

Grathwol, Ploetz & Oberhauser, and Charles P. Carroll, Excelsior, for appellant.

Rider, Bennett, Egan, Johnson & Arundel, and David F. Fitzgerald, Minneapolis, for respondents.

Heard before KNUTSON, C.J., and OTIS, ROGOSHESKE, SHERAN, and PETERSON, JJ.

OPINION

PETERSON, Justice.

While working as a babysitter for respondents' three young children, appellant was without warning attacked and bitten by their pet Siamese cat. She brought this action to recover for the extensive injuries which allegedly resulted, and she appeals from an order denying a new trial after the court below directed a verdict for respondents and from the judgment entered pursuant to that verdict. These alternative contentions are argued: (1) That the common-law cause of action for injuries by animals should be changed, or the statute covering injuries by dogs judicially extended, to hold owners of cats strictly liable for the acts of their pets; (2) that the evidence in this case should be held sufficient to prove a cause of action under the common law as it now stands, that is, to show that respondents' cat was dangerous and that they were aware of the fact; or (3) that respondents should in any event be held liable for failing to provide appellant with a safe place to work.

1. Most of the problems in this appeal fall within the ambit of the commonlaw's system of distributing the costs of misbehavior by animals. The relevant cause of action in tort, sometimes called 'the scienter action,' 1 which is not, at least in this jurisdiction, based on negligence (Anderson v. Anderson, 259 Minn. 412, 415, 107 N.W.2d 647, 649), divides animals held as property into two classes: Domesticated animals, or those Mansuetae or Domitae naturae, and wild beasts, or those Ferae naturae. In the case of injury by one of the first class, the plaintiff must prove that the particular animal was abnormal and dangerous, and that its owner or harborer let it run unfettered though he actually or constructively had knowledge of its harmful propensities--knowledge usually found to have been gleaned from specific acts of the animal prior to the injury sued upon. The possessor of an animal within the second class, on the other hand, is conclusively presumed to know of the danger, so a person injured need not prove such knowledge before he can recover.

This judicial distinction between classes of animals was clearly announced, at least by dicta, as early as 1730. Rex v. Huggins, 21 Ld.Raym. 1574, 1583, 92 Eng. Reprint 518, 524. The scienter action as it has come down to us is not without its modern critics, who would apply the simpler rules of liability for negligence to some or all of the situations it covers (Williams, Liability for Animals, pp. 361 to 364; McNeely, A Footnote on Dangerous Animals, 37 Mich.L.Rev. 1181, 1203), but the ancient doctrine has long been given continuous approval and application in Minnesota. E.g., Fake v. Addicks, 45 Minn. 37, 47 N.W. 450; Cuney v. Campbell, 76 Minn. 59, 78 N.W. 878; Rowe v. Ehrmanntraut, 92 Minn. 17, 99 N.W. 211; Maynard v. Keough, 145 Minn. 26, 175 N.W. 891; Lavalle v. Kaupp, 240 Minn. 360, 61 N.W.2d 228, 40 A.L.R.2d 539; Anderson v. Anderson, Supra.

1a. Appellant first contends that this distinction is based on comparative economic utility, the owners of 'useful' animals being somewhat protected as an encouragement to maintaining them and the owners of 'useless' animals receiving no protection whatever. Although the cat may once have served rural society as a 'mouser,' it is argued, in modern cities it is merely a dispensable pet, the owner of which ought to be held, as would the owner of a tiger, liable for any damage it causes.

So far as this argument may be based on the relative productivity of animals, it is not well founded. It is true that the economic contribution made by certain animals has been considered by the courts in the difficult cases of animals whose tameness has seemed in doubt. Thus, holding bees to be domesticated, the court in Earl v. Van Alstine, 8 Barb. (N.Y.) 630, 636, said that 'the law looks with more favor upon the keeping of animals that are useful to man, than such as are purely noxious and useless.' 2 It is also true that many of the animals which have been held to be of a harmless nature, such as milch cows (Schnell v. Howitt, 158 Or. 586, 76 P.2d 1130), are obviously more economically productive and, in that narrow sense, more useful to society than are cats.

The example of the horse, however, belies the suggestion that this is the primary on which the common law distinguishes. The earlier cases holding this animal domesticated may have dealt with beasts which were in the productive service of man, as in Nelson v. American Ry. Exp. Co., 154 Minn. 165, 191 N.W. 405, decided in 1923 and involving a draft horse with an alleged propensity to bite any passersby. The position of the horse has changed with the times, however, as perhaps has that of the cat; yet the law has continued to apply the same rules to these animals when in service only for amusement and exercise, as in Harris v. Breezy Point Lodge, Inc., 238 Minn. 322, 56 N.W.2d 655, decided in 1953 and involving an allegedly skittish riding horse kept at a resort.

So far as appellant's argument may proceed on any broader theory of utility, we find no basis for distinguishing between species of animals. The courts have indeed held animals Ferae naturae to include such worthless predators as coyotes, Collins v. Otto, 149 Colo. 489, 369 P.2d 564; and wolves, Hays v. Miller, 150 Ala. 621, 43 So. 818; but they have made the same finding as to chimpanzees, Baugh v. Beatty, 91 Cal.App.2d 786, 205 P.2d 671; buffalo, Hansen v. Brogan, 145 Mont. 224, 400 P.2d 265, 21 A.L.R.3d 595; elephants, H. E. Butt Grocery Co. v. Perez (Tex.Civ.App.) 408 S.W.2d 576; and, proverbially, tigers, Rex v. Huggins, Supra; Nichols v. Marsland, L.R. 10 Ex. 255. All of these are animals of undoubted value to society in science, education, and entertainment, on the keepers of which the law must have some reason other than uselessness for imposing a special burden of care.

A close examination of the authorities shows that the law's division of animals into those domesticated and those dangerous is based rather on '(e) xperience as interpreted by the English law.' Holmes, The Common Law, p. 157. Horses, cows, and other animals have been regarded by the courts as Domitae naturae because 'years ago, and continuously to the present time, the progeny of these classes has been found by experience to be harmless, and so the law assumes the result of this experience to be correct without further proof.' Filburn v. People's Palace and Aquarium Co. L.R. 25 Q.B. 258, 260. In cases where there is doubt as to the propensities of a species, rather than looking to economic utility, as in Earl v. Van Alstine, Supra, the courts may instead admit expert testimony on the question, as in Spring Co. v. Edgar, 99 U.S. (9 Otto) 645, 25 L.Ed. 487, involving deer kept in a park. More often, however, courts simply take judicial notice of an animal's characteristics, as in one of the earliest cases, Mason v. Keeling, 12 Mod. 332, 335, 88 Eng. Reprint 1359, 1361, where the court remarked that 'the law takes notice, that a dog is not of a fierce nature, but rather the contrary.' 3

'(I)t appears,' moreover, 'that as soon as an animal is placed in the harmless class by judicial decision, judicial notice will be taken of the fact in any future case.' Williams, Liability for Animals, p. 295. In the few apposite cases, the courts have without exception explicitly held or implicitly regarded the cat as a domesticated animal, one 'that is dealt with by mankind on the footing that a person may safely keep it.' Clinton v. J. Lyons & Co. (1912) 3 K.B. 198, 207; Marsalis v. La Salle (La.App.), 94 So.2d 120, involving, as does this case, a Siamese cat; Bischoff v. Cheney, 89 Conn. 1, 92 A. 660; Pallman v. Great A. & P. Tea Co., 117 Conn. 667, 167 A. 733; Gardner v. H. C. Bohack Co., 179 App.Div 242, 166 N.Y.S. 476; Buckle v. Holmes (1926) 2 K.B. 125, 54 A.L.R. 89. The Buckle case was cited with approval by this court in Olson v. Pederson, 206 Minn. 415, 288 N.W. 856, which before the enactment of Minn.St. 347.22 applied this general rule to dogs. As was stated by Chief Justice Rugg in Goodwin v. E. B. Nelson Grocery Co., 239 Mass. 232, 235, 132 N.E. 51, 53: 'The domestic cat is by nature ordinarily harmless and docile.'

We should be most reluctant, therefore, to be the first to observe judicially in this little house pet, the cat, the 'fearful symmetry' which the poet, William Blake, saw in the tiger. If the law has erred in interpreting mankind's experience with cats, or if this animal's value to society strikes an inadequate balance against whatever damage and...

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  • State v. Blatt
    • United States
    • West Virginia Supreme Court
    • 16 Junio 2015
    ...(“[E]vidence of ‘normal canine behavior’ ... is insufficient to demonstrate vicious propensities....”); Clark v. Brings, 284 Minn. 73, 169 N.W.2d 407, 412–13 (1969) (determining that a bite inflicted by a cat during play did not constitute evidence of viciousness).While dangerousness and vi......
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