Opinion ID: 2164622
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiff's requested pet instruction.

Text: Plaintiff on appeal complains of the failure of the trial court to give his requested pet instruction. This closely followed the wording of Restatement (Second) of Torts § 515, Comment (f), and would have told the jury, in part, that: If you find . . . that the City of Sioux Center, acting through its agents, officers and employees, believed the tiger was thoroughly tame, the defendant . . took the risk that the tiger might revert to its original wild habits and that such risk is that of the City and not the plaintiff in this case. Those in whose vicinity the animal is kept are entitled to assume that the animal will not so revert if the possessor or harborer deals with it in such a way as to give them reason to believe that the defendant regards it as so tamed as to be no longer dangerous. [As part of this instruction, plaintiff also requested that the court submit his definition of assumption of risk, as discussed above.] An example given in the Restatement comment to illustrate this concept is an elephant offered by its owner for rides by children. If the elephant became suddenly savage, the owner would become liable, the parents being entitled to assume that the elephant is tamed as represented. Another example is a chimpanzee, made accessible to an audience, reverting to a savage state. To warrant giving an instruction to the jury on an issue, there must be substantial support for it in the record, and a mere scintilla of evidence is not sufficient. Walker v. Sedrel, 260 Iowa 625, 632, 149 N.W.2d 874, 878 (1967). To determine sufficiency of the evidence, it must be given the most favorable construction it will bear in favor of the requesting party. Miller v. International Harvester Co., 246 N.W.2d 298, 301 (Iowa 1976). When so viewed, we hold the evidence in this case did not warrant giving this instruction and the trial court properly refused it. There is nothing in the record from which the jury could reasonably find that the City, through its employees, believed the tiger was thoroughly tamed or that they dealt with it in such a way as to give them reason to believe that the defendant regards it as so tamed as to be no longer dangerous. The City's full-time caging of the animal, its careful method of transferring it from one cage to another, the method of feeding, watering and bedding of it, and the other facts outlined above clearly show that the City did not regard it as tame. Even though several persons had petted him through the cage and had not been injured, including city employees, this evidence falls far short of creating a submissible issue of its claimed complete tameness required to support plaintiff's theory.