SECOND READING. (Hansard, 10 June 1887)

§ LORD MOUNT-TEMPLE

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, the object of the Bill was to provide that the owner of a dog should be liable in damages for any personal injury done by such dog to any person, and it should not be necessary for any person suing for the recovery of damages for any such injury to show a previous mischievous propensity in such dog, or that the owner knew or had notice of such mischievous propensity, or that the injury complained of was attributable to any negligence on the part of the owner in the keeping or management of such dog. The sight of dogs with jaws tied up by iron muzzles had given to multitudes a new impression of the dangerous character of doers. Many, who used to think of them as tame and pleasant domestic creatures, were suspicious and alarmed at the sight of them, and some people had begun to wish that no dogs were to be seen in the street. It was for the interest of dogs and of dog-owners that the rising prejudice against the freedom of dogs should be allayed, for, though the cases in which dogs were savage and injured strangers were very rare, they did arise, and there ought to be an easy process for getting compensation in the form of damages. In this respect the law was absurdly inefficacious. The right of a person injured by the bite of a dog to maintain an action for damages against the owner of a dog depended on his ability to prove by evidence, not only that the dog was of a mischievous and ferocious disposition, but that this fact was known to the owner or person in charge of the dog. There had been many cases in which the ferocity of the dog and the knowledge in the owner of that ferocity were fully believed by the neighbourhood, and yet the injured party lost his damages from the want of the particular evidence required by law. This was one of the instances in which the law gave more protection to property than to individual human persons; for, by an Act of 1865, damages for injury inflicted by dogs on cattle and sheep could be obtained without proof of the previous ferocity of the 1563 dog, or previous knowledge in the person who was responsible for the dog, so that if a dog bit a calf in his pasture the law gave him easy redress, but if that dog preferred to bite the calf of his leg, the law gave him little more than a nominal redress. None of their Lordships would doubt that an alteration of the whole condition of the law was required, but there might be a question as to the form of that alteration. The ancient law seemed to have been founded on the assumption that dogs, like other domestic animals, must be considered too respectful towards men and women to presume to injure them until some evidence could be produced to prove an exception in the case of a particular dog. He believed that most lawyers agreed that it was not necessary at the present time to cling to the antiquated doctrine of scienter, and he had the result of an inquiry made for the opinions of the County Court Judges, who, with very few exceptions, considered it better to extend the principle of the Act of 1865 to injuries done to human beings than to adopt a new form of application of the old rule of scienter. The owner was free to have or not to have a dog. He got the pleasure and companionship of the animal, and upon him, and not upon anyone else, ought the risk to fall if the dog turned out to be worse than he expected. On these grounds, he hoped their Lordships would assent to the second reading of the Bill.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)

said, he was very sorry he could not recommend their Lordships to adopt the proposed alteration of the law. No doubt, a person who chose to keep a mischievous dog ought to be responsible for any injury done by it. That was the law at present, and it applied not to dogs only, but to all other mischievous animals. If a man chose to keep a tiger, he was bound to keep it under such conditions that it could not kill or injure human beings. If a dog had become ferocious, and was likely to worry mankind, the law said that the owner who knowingly permitted such a dog to be at large was responsible in damages for any injury it might commit. So far the law seemed to him to be based upon an intelligible principle. But now 1564 it was suggested that the law should go further. The Bill would make persons liable for damages from accidental causes, as in the case of a dog being affected with rabies. He did not think the noble Lord could have contemplated the effect and the far-reaching consequences of the alteration he proposed. The keeping of a dog was not in itself a wrong, unless it were accompanied by negligence or some culpable omission to provide against the risk of injury to the public. He admitted that the noble Lord had some precedent for his Bill in the Act of 1865. He did not think their Lordships would approve this very serious alteration in the law, which, in his opinion, would open the door for numberless actions of a frivolous and mischievous character.