News Cut: August 8, 2011 Archive

Tuffy v. Bruno

Posted at 11:40 AM on August 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

You're walking your small dog, Tuffy, down the street when a dog named Bruno runs out of a house, picks up Tuffy in his jaws and won't let go. While you try to free Tuffy, you fall and break your hip.

Are Tuffy's owners liable for damages?

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled a definite "maybe" today when it reinstated a case a district court threw out. Gordon Anderson, Tuffy's owner, sued Dennis Christopherson and his son, who were in charge of Bruno

In throwing the case out, a District Court ruled that Minnesota law shields a dog owner from liability if the dog isn't focused on the person who was injured. In this case, the lower court said, Bruno was only interested in hurting Tuffy, not Tuffy's owner.

The state law reads:

If a dog, without provocation, attacks or injures any person who is acting peaceably in any place where the person may lawfully be, the owner of the dog is liable in damages to the person so attacked or injured to the full amount of the injury sustained.

The Court of Appeals, however, cited a Minnesota Supreme Court case in which a nine-year old boy was killed when a dog riding in a car distracted a driver, who ran off the road, killing him. In that case -- Lewellin v. Huber -- the high court overruled a lower court that ruled the dog's owners were liable for the boy's death. But the Supreme Court declined to address the issue of whether actual physical contact between the dog and an injured person is required for the statute above to apply.

In Tuffy v. Bruno (actually called Anderson v. Christopherson), the Court of Appeals said only a jury can answer the question. "It is possible that a jury could conclude that (Tuffy's owner's) decision to intervene in a dog fight interrupted the chain of causation wuch that his injury was not a direct and immediate result of Bruno's action," the court said.

Here's the full opinion.

Social networking and the hoodlum

Posted at 2:08 PM on August 8, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Tech

Twitter may have had a role to play in the rioting in looting that took place over the weekend in London, some officials say.

Last night, police battled rioters and looters in several areas of London after a man was shot and killed by police in the northern suburb of Tottenham.

"The police are ahead of the curve in information technology and would have experience of the use of social- networking sites by troublemakers," Steve O'Connell, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, which monitors London's Metropolitan Police Service, told Bloomberg News. "The bad guys were using these sites to target areas quickly. Small bands of ne'er-do- wells were descending on high-quality stores to loot."

Where would ne'er-do-wellers learn such a thing?

Maybe in the USA.

Since late last spring, Chicago authorities, for example, have been trying to combat flash mobs of crooks and thugs who've used social networking to coordinate their attacks and stay one step ahead of the cops.

Today, the mayor of Philadelphia warned parents that they'd be held responsible for the flash mob ne'er-do-welling by their kids.

"It is your responsibility to know where they are, what they are doing and who they are with. They are your children. You need to raise them. You are responsible for them," Mayor Michael Nutter said while announcing a curfew for kids.

He said parents who are called to pick up a child breaking curfew will be issued a warning on the first occasion. On subsequent violations, fines can increase to $500.

"The fascinating thing about technology is that once we open the door, it's going to move in ways that we can't always predict and are slow to control, because we are reacting rather than [being] proactive," Scott Decker, a criminal justice professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, told the Christian Science Monitor.