New York Court of Appeals Judge Robert S. Smith is not usually inclined to expand tort liability, but something about the case of Fred the dehorned-but-testosterone-driven bull and the unfortunate carpenter who encountered him seemingly made the Manhattanite see red.
“For all the faults of modern tort law, and they are many, I do not think that this attempt to cling to the uncertainties of a distant era will work out well,” Smith wrote on behalf of himself and two other dissenters from a four-judge decision that Fred’s owner was not liable for the carpenter’s injuries. “Why should a person hit by a subway train be able to recover and one hit by a breeding bull be left without a remedy?”
