Opinion ID: 1828289
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Heading: a. civil code article 2321 liability prior to 1996

Text: Prior to the 1996 legislative changes, Article 2321 of the Civil Code provided in pertinent part that [t]he owner of an animal is answerable for the damage he has caused.... [1] The two seminal cases addressing liability under former Article 2321 are Holland v. Buckley, 305 So.2d 113 (La.1974), and Boyer v. Seal, 553 So.2d 827, 832 (La.1989). In Holland, the plaintiff's German Shepherd was running loose in plaintiff's front yard when it bolted across the street and attacked the defendant's poodle walking on the opposite sidewalk. The defendant was bitten when he lifted his poodle out of the German Shepherd's reach. The Holland court found the defendant to be strictly liable for the plaintiff's injury. In Boyer, the plaintiff tripped over her daughter's house cat that had startled her when it rubbed against her leg while she was visiting in her daughter's home. The Boyer court declined to hold the daughter strictly liable for her mother's injury, finding that the cat had not posed an unreasonable risk of harm. The reasoning of both decisions will be discussed more fully below. Early cases addressing Article 2321 liability against animal owners, such as Montgomery v. Koester, 35 La. Ann. 1091 (1883), for example, noted that French interpretations of French Civil Code Article 1385, essentially identical to Louisiana's Article 2321, had imposed strict liability upon the owner for harm caused by the animal, except in cases of force majeure or of contributory fault of the injured person, and regardless of whether the animal was vicious or whether the owner knew of its vicious character. Holland v. Buckley, 305 So.2d at 116. The English rule, in contrast, was based on negligence, such that the owner was responsible for harm caused by his animal only if he knew the animal was dangerous and nevertheless allowed it to escape and thereupon do harm. Holland, 305 So.2d at 116-17. And in Delisle v. Bourriague, 105 La. 77, 29 So. 731 (1901), the court characterized Article 2321 as founded upon the presumption that the fault is chargeable to the owner of the animal that caused the damage, or to the person in whose use or under whose care it was at the time of the accident; and that presumption can be made to give way only in the presence of proof either of an unforeseen event or by the imprudence of the one injured.... 105 La. at 83-84, 29 So. at 734. Around the turn of the Nineteenth Century, however, a line of jurisprudence in Louisiana interpreting Article 2321 began to adopt a standard of negligence that has been described as the first bite rule, in which the owner of a domestic animal owes no general duty to guard against harm to third persons until the animal has displayed dangerous propensities. See Frank L. Maraist, Thomas C. Galligan, Louisiana Tort Law, Sect. 14-7, p. 346 (Michie 1996) (hereinafter Maraist & Galligan); see also Tripani v. Meraux, 184 La. 66, 165 So. 453 (1936); Martinez v. Bernhard, 106 La. 368, 30 So. 901 (1901). The reasoning was that an owner who neither knew nor should have known that his animal posed some danger to others, perhaps by proving the previously gentle nature of the creature, could not have foreseen the first bite, and thus would not be held responsible when the animal first caused damage. Holland, 305 So.2d at 119; see also Frank L. Maraist, Thomas C. Galligan, Jr., Burying Ceasar: Civil Justice Reform and the Changing Face of Louisiana Tort Law, 71 Tul. L.Rev. 339, 352 (1996) (hereinafter Burying Ceasar). According to Holland, three lines of cases developed after the appearance of the first bite is free approach in Martinez v. Bernhard . One line of cases allowed the victim to recover from the owner upon proof of the dangerous propensities of the animal and the owner's presumed knowledge thereof. 305 So.2d at 116-17. Though this approach was essentially what the Holland court would ultimately adopt, the court noted that the cases had reached their holdings with little or no consideration of Article 2321. Id. at 117. A second line of cases held that the harm caused by the animal created a presumption of fault on the part of its owner, which shifted the burden to the owner to show that he was free of even the slightest fault; however, the owner could exculpate himself from liability by showing that he himself did not contribute to the accident by some lack of care on his part, i.e., that he was not negligent. Id. at 117. The third line of cases required the victim to prove both the existence of a dangerous propensity of the animal and also the knowledge of such propensity on the part of the owner. Id. The Holland court noted that this approach placed a heavy burden upon the plaintiff and had no support in the text of Article 2321 or its legislative or jurisprudential history. Id. The Holland court, rejecting any negligence based approach to liability for damages caused by animals, set forth what it held to be the correct interpretation of Article 2321: When a domesticated animal harms another, the master of the animal is presumed to be at fault. The fault so provided is in the nature of strict liability, as an exception to or in addition to any ground of recovery on the basis of negligence, Article 2316. The owner may exculpate himself from such presumed fault only by showing that the harm was caused by the fault of the victim, by the fault of a third person for whom he is not responsible, or by a fortuitous event. The chief difference between this view and that of the second line of cases cited above is that, therein, the owner was permitted to exculpate himself of fault by showing that he himself did not contribute to the accident by some lack of care on his part. Under our present holding, the owner can exculpate himself from the fault of having his animal hurt someone only by proving that the harm resulted from some independent cause not imputable to the defendant. The underlying reason for the owner's liability is that, as between him who created the risk of harm and the innocent victim thereby injured, the risk creator should bear the loss. He maintains the animal for his own use or pleasure. Holland, 305 So.2d at 119 (footnote omitted). The Holland court observed that [i]n the crowded society of today, the burden of harms caused by an animal should be borne by its master who keeps him for his own pleasure or use rather than by an innocent victim injured by the animal. Holland, 305 So.2d at 119 and 120; see also Boyer v. Seal, 553 So.2d at 832. As this court later explained, the injured person need not prove the negligence of the owner. Howard v. Allstate Ins. Co., 520 So.2d 715 (La.1988). Liability arises solely from the legal relationship between the owner and the animal. Rozell v. Louisiana Animal Breeders Co-op., Inc., 434 So.2d 404 (La.1983). Ultimately, the Holland court held the owner of the dog liable to the plaintiff whom the dog had bitten, because the owner did not rebut the presumption of fault created by the injury caused by the dog. Id. at 120. A year later, this court decided Loescher v. Parr, 324 So.2d 441 (La.1975), a case involving a person's liability under La. Civ. Code art. 2317 for the damage caused by an inanimate thing over which he has garde. [2] The Loescher court adopted a variation of the French interpretation of Article 1384 of the Code Napoleon, holding that, under La Civ.Code art. 2317, a guardian of a thing is liable when a plaintiff proves (a) that the thing which caused his damage was in the garde of the defendant, (b) that there was a defect or vice in the thing, i.e., an unreasonable risk of harm was created by it, and (c) that his damage occurred because of this defect or vice, unless the guardian can prove the damage was caused by the fault of the victim, by the fault of a third person, or by an irresistible force. Loescher v. Parr, 324 So.2d at 449. The Loescher decision, therefore, did two things: it not only applied a relational responsibility strict liability theory to Article 2317 damage claims, but it also set forth an analytical method for determining whether a thing possessed a defect or vice for which the guardian should be held strictly liable. As we noted in Boyer, the Loescher formula for determining a guardian's responsibility contained a limitation on strict liability not recognized by the French jurisprudence, i.e., the damage must have been caused by a vice or aspect of the thing that creates an unreasonable risk of harm to others. [3] Boyer, 553 So.2d at 832. Nonetheless, in explaining the rationale for this analytical method, the court in Loescher described its previous interpretations of Civil Code articles 2318, 2320, 2321 and 2322 as logically consistent with such a method. 324 So.2d at 446. The Loescher court then summarized the principles of legal fault underpinning these articles as follows: When harm results from the conduct or defect of a person or thing which creates an unreasonable risk of harm to others, a person legally responsible under these code articles for the supervision, care, or guardianship of the person or thing may be held liable for the damage thus caused, despite the fact that no personal negligent act or inattention on the former's part is proved. The liability arises from his legal relationship to the person or thing whose conduct or defect creates an unreasonable risk of injuries to others. Loescher, 324 So.2d at 446. Subsequent to Loescher, this court in Boyer resolved any lingering question whether the injured plaintiff, in order to establish strict liability against the owner of an animal, as against the owner of a thing or building, must prove that the damage suffered by the plaintiff was caused by an animal that created an unreasonable risk of harm. [4] In Boyer, this court acknowledged the Loescher court's attempt to give manageable scope to strict liability and to harmonize its application by setting forth a coherent principle, i.e., that the guardian of the person or thing should bear the cost of damage caused through unreasonable risks of harm that his charge creates. 553 So.2d at 834. Accordingly, the court rejected expand[ing] responsibility for animals into a rule of superstrict liability. Id. The Boyer court reasoned: There are various policies supporting the unreasonable risk principle: As Loescher observes, the person who has the guardianship and usually the enjoyment of the person or thing should bear the cost of damage caused by risks they create rather than the innocent victim. Further, it is thought that the guardian is in a better position to anticipate, detect, guard against, and insure against these risks, making him a better risk spreader and more efficient conductor of the deterrent effects of civil liability. A competing policy, however, is that the guardian should not be responsible for protecting against all risks; some risks are relatively too small to require him to protect others therefrom. Thus, if the unreasonable risk of harm principle were to be abolished in the cases involving liability for animals, these policies would tend to be defeated or at least not promoted and owners would be made insurers against loss from any risk, no matter how insignificant or socially tolerable the risk might be. We see no reason that animal owners should be treated less favorably than owners of buildings and guardians of inanimate things under strict liability conceptions of the Civil Code. Moreover, it would appear that doing so might undermine the principle's application to strict liability under other delictual articles of the Code. Consequently, we conclude that the unreasonable risk of harm principle should be maintained in animal cases in the interest of the continued manageable and harmonious application of strict liability under the Civil Code. Boyer v. Seal, 553 So.2d at 834 (emphasis supplied). Essentially, then, Boyer applied the unreasonable risk of harm principle to animals in order to limit strict liability against their owners because of the competing social policy that the owner of an animal should not be required to insure against all risks and because the court had been applying the same or similar principle to things and buildings. With the unreasonable risk of harm principle established as applicable to animal owners, the Boyer court determined that the cat in that case had not posed an unreasonable risk of harm. The method for determining whether a thing under garde poses an unreasonable risk of harm, the court noted, is similar to that of taking into account all of the social, moral, economic and other considerations as would a legislator regulating the matter, and the analysis is virtually identical to the riskutility balancing test used in both negligence and products liability theories. 553 So.2d at 834-36 (citing inter alia Entrevia v. Hood, 427 So.2d 1146 (La.1983), and Bell v. Jet Wheel Blast, 462 So.2d 166 (La. 1985)). To summarize, the Holland court, in applying Article 2321 to damages caused by animals, relied upon early Louisiana jurisprudence addressing Article 2321 and upon French commentators' interpretations of similar Article 1385 of the Code Napoleon. Holland thereupon rejected a first bite is free negligence approach in favor of a strict liability theory. The Boyer court later applied to animals the unreasonable risk of harm principle, a limitation on strict liability articulated in Loescher, to determine whether the owner of an animal should be held strictly liable for the damages caused by his animal.