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152 Mass. 7

McLaughlin v. Kemp

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1890-06-21

Two actions OE tort, against Arthur Kemp and his wife, Adelaide M. Kemp, to recover damages for injuries resulting from the bite of a dog. The first case was brought by the plaintiff, a minor, for personal injuries, and the second was brought by his father, for the loss of his services, and for the expense of caring for him while he was suffering from his injuries.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1890-06-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently September 1985

10 state decisions

301890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Field, J.

¶1It was admitted that the husband was the owner of the dog which bit John E. McLaughlin. We infer from the exceptions that he was also owner of all the dogs. A wife is not necessarily, as matter of law, a keeper of dogs which her husband owns and keeps on premises which she owns, and which both occupy as husband and wife, although she carries on a separate business upon the premises.

¶2It was a question of fact for the jury whether the wife was the keeper of the dogs, and the ruling that, “ if they were her husband’s dogs, and he kept them there against her consent and contrary to her consent, and she did nothing to maintain or keep them, did not give them food, or protect them, of provide for them in any way, she would not be in the sense of the law a keeper of the dogs,” was correct. The instructions given were sufficiently favorable to the plaintiffs.

¶3Exceptions overruled.

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