Dog Bite in UK Law

The Section is very cumbrously worded and will give rise to several difficulties in future. Those circumstances are "particular circumstances" within Section 2(2) (b). It was "due" to those circumstances that the damage was likely to be severe if an untruder did enter on its territory. Section 2(2)(c): Those characteristics were known to the keeper. It follows that the keeper of the dog is strictly liable unless he can bring himself within one of the exceptions in Section 5.

I have some difficulty with Kennedy LJ's proposition in Bezzina, at page 969(a), that if there is injury there must have been immediately before it grounds for reasonable apprehension of it. The act of a dog causing injury, a bite or otherwise, is itself capable of being conduct giving grounds for reasonable apprehension of injury.

In other words, when one encounters the words in Section 3 (1) —"dangerously out of control" —one applies the meaning which is set out in Section 10 (3) and that means, in effect, that if a dog is in a public place, if the person who was accused is shown to be the owner of the dog, if the dog is dangerously out of control in the sense that the dog is shown to be acting in a way that gives grounds for reasonable apprehension that it would injure anyone, liability follows.

A person keeping an animal "mansutae naturae" which he knows has a propensity to do a particular kind of mischief is under an absolute duty to prevent it form doing that kind of mischief and is therefore liable without proof of negligence for any damage caused by the animal's acting in accordance with that know propensity.

The mere fact that a particular animal shared its potentially dangerous characteristics with other animals of the same species will not preclude the satisfaction of requirement (b) if on the particular facts the likelihood of damage was attributable to characteristics normally found in animals of the same species at times or in circumstances corresponding with those in which the damage actually occurred.

In this case, however, it is indeed difficult to conclude that it was anything other than the particular characteristics of these horses once they had been terrified which led to their escape and to this accident taking place. They were still not behaving in the ordinary way in which they would behave when taken on the road. One witness referred to them bolting; another to them trotting across the road in front of the vehicles; they crashed into the vehicles rather than the other way about.

In such circumstances it would be surprising if every such piece of advice were reasoned with as much comprehensive precision as may be applied in hindsight by an appellate tribunal which has had the benefit of extensive argument and leisurely reflection. It would not be in the interests of those clients if they were compelled by the effect of over-prescriptive decisions to adopt a practice of defensive advocacy in the conduct of litigation or advising litigants about the course to be taken.