Monday, September 22, 2008
Dangerous Instrumentality
If you bring a lion into your home, make its cage as safe as any human could make it, but the lion gets out anyway and bites the local postal employee to death, you can't say in your defense, "But I wasn't negligent." You have strict liability for introducing a foreign and dangerous instrument into the neighborhood.
The long and winding road of the two brutal and dangerous dogs, Presa Canarios, brought into the neighborhood by a choice San Francisco moron, continues to wind. The dogs' owner, Marjorie Knoller, had been convicted by a jury, rightly, of 2nd degree murder after her dogs got loose and mauled neighbor Dianne Whipple to death, but the judge reduced the verdict to manslaughter and sentenced Knoller to 4 years. On appeal, the California Supreme Court reinstated the jury verdict and today Marjorie got 15 years to life. Let's hope it's the latter.
The Presa Canario is like a pit bull on steroids and canine growth hormone. The dogs come from the Canary islands which, mirabile dictu, were named for dogs like these, rather than for yellow birds. Cave canem.
Labels: Dangerous Instrumentality; Presa Canario
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:04 PM 
