Opinion ID: 1670605
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Lack of Historical Basis for Exempting Animal Cases From Unreasonable Risk Requirement

Text: There does not appear to be any basis in French jurisprudence for treating liability for damage caused by animals as a stricter form of responsibility than that of the guardian for harm caused by an inanimate thing. Article 1385 of the French Civil Code seems to have been derived from the special rules on liability for injuries inflicted by animals in Roman law, in the customs of pre-revolutionary France, and in the writings of French jurists prior to codification. Yet, as we have seen, this form of liability did not remain separately imprisoned in its pre-code state; its evolution was an essential ingredient in the growth and exposition of French delictual law in the industrial and automotive era. A presumption of fault, resembling strict liability, developed in the interpretation of article 1385 that was later incorporated and built upon in the discovery of the presumption of liability theory underlying article 1384. Likewise, the evolvement of the liability for damage by animals and inanimate things in Louisiana contains no genuine historical basis for treating responsibility under Civil Code article 2321 as more strict or inherently different from that recognized under article 2317. In Loescher, when this court formulated a principle of strict liability for damage caused by inanimate things, it identified as the basic criterion for this new form of responsibility the same common characteristic it found to underlie the other forms of strict liability previously recognized under Civil Code articles 2318, 2320, 2321 and 2322, including the strict liability for damage caused by a domestic animal. The basic criterion and common characteristic recognized was that the thing or the person under garde must have created an unreasonable risk of harm that took effect in causing the plaintiff's injury. In fact, in Loescher this court acknowledged that in Holland v. Buckley ... we held that under Article 2321 the owner of an animal which creates an unreasonable risk of injury to others is liable for the harm done by that animal because of its deficient conduct, even though the owner himself was not personally negligent. Loescher, 324 So.2d at 446. The court had not actually used the words unreasonable risk of harm in Holland v. Buckley when it adopted the French interpretation of the Civil Code's provision for liability due to damage caused by animals, but there was no great need to discuss a possible limitation upon the scope of liability in that case. The attack upon Holland and his poodle by Buckley's German shepherd was clearly among the type of harms that had traditionally been covered under the French code and pre-code law. Further, the application of an open-ended strict liability to the comparatively small field of animal cases did not portend the cataclysmic effects that might result if it were to be applied to cases involving mishaps caused by inanimate things, including all motor vehicle accidents. When the same court, speaking through the same author, Justice Tate, subsequently in Loescher considered a case involving damage caused by a tree, an object belonging to the infinite class of inanimate things, it perceived that if it were to adopt an interpretation of Civil Code article 2317 similar to that placed by the French courts on article 1384, paragraph 1, of the Code Napoleon, it would be challenged by two major problems: First, whether to limit the scope of the liability for damage caused by inanimate things so as to avoid the main weakness of the French experience, i.e., the confusing, contradictory, and mysterious principles and solutions involved in applying strict liability to all things involved in accidents, especially to all vehicles involved in traffic accidents; and second, once the desirable scope of the new strict liability had been determined, how to reconcile this with the other bases of strict liability previously recognized under the Civil Code. See A. Tunc, Louisiana Tort Law at the Crossroads, 48 Tul.L.Rev. 1111, 1119 (1974). The Loescher court chose, in adopting a strict liability for damage caused by things, to address both problems by limiting that liability to responsibility for damage caused by a thing's vice or defect, which it defined as a quality or aspect of a thing that creates an unreasonable risk of harm to others. After a comprehensive review and analysis of the previous cases recognizing strict liability under other delictual articles of the Civil Code, the court concluded that the basic principle of each of those articles is the same as that which underlies article 2317 strict liability, viz., the liability of the owner or guardian 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.