Court Opinion

ID: 9676597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:28:20.817175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:49.718616
License: Public Domain

LANSING, Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the analysis of Judge Parker. Although there is superficial appeal to the idea of limiting the reach of the statute to an injury caused by direct contact with a dog, neither the statute nor the longer view calls for such a restrictive reading. The bright line of actual contact soon gives way to shadings of whether a dog owner is liable if a dog with a stick in its mouth injures a child’s eye or whether a dog that knocks over one child who knocks over another child is within the purview of the statute. Rather than draw a rigid line of actual contact, it is more reasonable to use the flexible and time-tested standard of proximate cause with the attendant safeguard of intervening cause.