The Claimant owned two horses which were kept at the Defendants' premises. She alleged that her horses were spooked by the Defendants driving a small tractor and roller through a corner of the paddock. The Claimant had entered the paddock and, holding both horses by their harnesses, led them to the bottom paddock gate. She let go of one of the horses (a recently retired race horse) in order to open the gate, at which point the horse reared up and kicked her in the face, causing dental injury.
The Claimant brought a claim against the Defendants for both negligence and breach of the Animals Act 1971. DWF successfully struck out the Animals Act aspect of the claim on the basis that the Defendants were not keepers of the animal and so the Act did not apply. This was appealed by the Claimant.
Section 6(3)(a) of the Animals Act specifies that a person is a keeper of an animal if he 'owns it or has it in his possession'.
Previous case law confirms that just having an animal kept on your land is not enough to make you a 'keeper' for the purposes of the Act (Doolan v EP Cornall & Sons [2001], unreported). Some element of active control over the animal was therefore required. The Claimant tried to argue that there was active control as the Defendants had, on occasion, brought in the horse in question as a favour to the Claimant if it was particularly bad weather and she was at work.
The court on appeal determined that 'has' is in the present tense. Therefore, the active control needs to be at the time of the accident (our emphasis), not some prior control. The judgment therefore acts to essentially restrict the definition in section 6(3)(a) to "owns it or has it in his possession” (meaning active control) at the time of the incident.
This will allow a greater number of defendants to escape liability under the Animals Act. For example: a defendant owns a livery yard and stables. They actively look after a large number of horses (but do not own the horses). The claimant is a farrier. He attends the stables to re-shoe the horses. He takes them out of their stables one by one and ties them up in the defendant’s courtyard whilst he performs his services. One of the horses kicks out and causes him injury. The farrier was the one with control of the animal at the time of the accident, not the livery yard. He will therefore be unable to claim against the defendant livery yard under the strict liability provisions of the Animals Act 1971.
Authors: Abigail Jennings and Richard Parker
