Opinion ID: 2058245
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Count I. The Animal Control Act Claim

Text: Section 16 of the Animal Control Act, on which plaintiff's first count is based, provides: If a dog or other animal, without provocation, attacks or injures any person who is peaceably conducting himself in any place where he may lawfully be, the owner of such dog or other animal is liable in damages to such person for the full amount of the injury sustained. (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1983, ch. 8, par. 366.) The legislative history of the statute leads us to conclude that our legislature did not intend to create a statutory cause of action for a renter of a horse like the plaintiff in this case. The original version of this statute was passed in 1949 and applied only to dogs. (Ill Rev. Stat. 1953, ch. 8, par. 12d.) The apparent purpose of the legislation was modest: to reduce the burden on dog-bite plaintiffs by eliminating the one-bite rule  the common law requirement that a plaintiff must plead and prove that a dog owner either knew or was negligent not to know that his dog had a propensity to injure people. Beckert v. Risberg (1965), 33 Ill.2d 44, 46. Enacting the Animal Control Act in 1973, the legislature amended this dog-bite statute to cover other animals. We have found nothing, nor has plaintiff cited anything, that suggests that the underlying purpose of this amendment should not be as narrowly construed as that of its predecessor statute. In deciding whether the plaintiff stated a valid cause of action under the statute, we start from our well-established presumption that a statute that represents a departure from the common law should be narrowly construed in favor of those who are subject to the statute's operation. ( In re W.W. (1983), 97 Ill.2d 53, 57; Barthel v. Illinois Central Gulf R.R. Co. (1978), 74 Ill.2d 213, 220.) Accordingly, we believe that the legislature intended only to provide coverage under the statute for plaintiffs who, by virtue of their relationship to the owner of the dog or other animal or the lack of any such relationship, may not have any way of knowing or avoiding the risk that the animal poses to them. This interpretation is consistent with the emphasis the statute places on lack of provocation and plaintiff's peaceable conduct in a place in which he is legally entitled to be. The plaintiff's relationship to the defendant in this case excluded the plaintiff from the coverage of the statute. Plaintiff rented the horse from defendant's stable and claimed to fully understand and accept the risks of horseback riding. By establishing this relationship, the plaintiff took himself out of the class of persons the legislature intended to protect. We therefore hold that where a person rents a horse and understands and expressly accepts the risks of using the horse, he cannot recover damages from the person who rented the horse to him under section 16 of the Animal Control Act.