Skip to main content

Labradors are not evil. Mostly.

From a case in the Court of Session, reported in the news area of the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland.

This seems to have been an unfortunate accident involving an excitable black lab that collided with another dog walker and injured her knee, while it was playing with her own dog. It was attempted to establish liability for the behaviour of the dog under the Animals (Scotland) Act 1987:

"Section 1 of the Act provides, so far as relevant:

"1(1) ... a person shall be liable for any injury or damage caused by an animal if -

(b) the animal belongs to a species whose members generally are by virtue of their physical attributes or habits likely (unless controlled or restrained) to injure severely or kill persons or animals, or damage property to a material extent; and

(c) the injury or damage complained of is directly referable to such physical attributes or habits.

(2) In this section 'species' includes -

(a) a form or variety of the species ...

(3) For the purposes of sub-section (1)(b) above -

(a) dogs ... shall be deemed to be likely (unless controlled or restrained) to injure severely or kill persons or animals by biting or otherwise savaging, attacking or harrying ..."

As Lord Malcolm said: "The pursuer's case is that, by virtue of their physical attributes or habits, black labradors are likely to injure severely or kill persons unless restrained or controlled (section 1(1)(b)). I suspect that for the general population this proposition would cause much incredulity. "

Very true - I think you may well be more likely to be bounced to death, or drowned in drool than be confronted with a Cujo-type labrador attack...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...
16 comments
Read more

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f...
12 comments
Read more

Why do I do this?

By "this", I mean the whole librarian thaaaaang. Woodsiegirl recently blogged on why she became a librarian, and after conversations in the comments section, I thought I'd join in with my own blog post on the topic. As I said on Woodsiegirl's blog, I am one of those odd people who always wanted to be a librarian. My Mum and careers adviser both said it was a daft idea as 1) there'd be no jobs as computers would be doing everything by then (careers advisor) and 2) there's no money in it (Mums advice, herself a lifelong librarian). I actually was surrounded by librarians: Mum worked in libraries her whole career from the local branch library (when I say local, I mean local: 100 yards from my parents house) to the secondary school I went to (although years before I went there). My Aunt worked alongside my Mum for a while before emigrating, and has worked various shifts as cover in the local library since coming back home. So, I kinda grew up in libraries: I would...
4 comments
Read more