Photo from Channel 5 News
Recently, a Connecticut lower court ruled that horses are naturally vicious animals in a case involving a boy that was bit on the cheek by a horse in 2006.
The boy was visiting the farm with his father who was buying plants, when he reached up to pet a horse name Scuppy and “the animal stuck his neck out from behind a fence and bit the child on his right cheek, removing a large chunk of it,” says an article on examiner.com.
The boy's father sued the farm's owner in 2010 but lost. The court concluded that there was no evidence that the horse had ever been aggressive in the past and the family could not positively say which horse had actually bitten the boy.
Later, a Connecticut Appellate Court overturned that ruling; finding that Scuppy, as a horse, was vicious and steps should have been taken to prevent injury.
Now, the case will be reviewed in Connecticut's Supreme Court, and if the decision is upheld, Connecticut would be the first state to consider horses a dangerous and vicious species.
What could this mean?
If this ruling sticks, it would make owning horses much more difficult. Insurance to own horses would become extremely expensive and would severely hurt the state's horse industry.
An article on Channel 5 News states, “Horse farmers and equine enthusiasts, who cite 2005 statistics saying that the horse industry contributes about $221 million a year to the state's economy in boarding, training, lessons and breeding businesses, are asking the state Supreme Court to overturn the Appellate Court's decision. The Connecticut Farm Bureau and Connecticut Horse Council filed a friend of the court brief saying that under common law viciousness generally is judged individually according to age, breed and gender, not as an entire species.”
The Superior Court judge said the horse's owner testified that neither he nor anyone else had ever seen Scuppy bite a person before and that in 28 years, none of the horses at the farm bit or injured anyone.
"Cats have a tendency to scratch and horses have a tendency to bite, but the plaintiffs have failed to show, as they must, that the defendants were on notice that Scuppy specifically, and not horses generally, had a tendency to bite people or other horses," the judge ruled.
