Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

58 N.H. 335

Connell v. Putnam

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 5, 1878

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1878-06-05

Case, for wrongfully and injuriously keeping a vicious liorse, which attacked and injured the son and servant of the plaintiff. The evidence was, that the horse was at large, feeding upon the grass between the travelled road and the sidewalk, and kicked the boy, and fractured his thigh bone, while he was passing on the sidewalk, not meddling with the liorse. There was no evidence that the horse was vicious. The defendant moved for a nonsuit.

Relies on Stevenson v. Mudgett · Bassett v. Salisbury Manufacturing Co. · Davis v. Hill

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-06-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently November 2004

1 district · 2 state decisions

1018781880189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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 →

Allen, J.

¶1 The amendment does not change the form nor destroy the identity of the cause of action. The original count involved negligence. A wrongful keeping of a vicious animal is a negligent keeping. Keeping it with that degree of care which would exclude legal liability, would not be wrongful; and that want of care which would make the keeping injurious to another, would bo negligence as well as a wrong. The original count charged negligence in keeping a vicious horse. The amended count made negligence, in permitting a horse to go at largo without a keeper, the gist of the action. Both counts set up negligence as the gravamen, but each states the particulars of the injury differently. The vice of the animal is omitted in the second count, but it is the same boy, receiving the same kick and consequent injury from the same horse, and all through the negligence of the owner. The amendment introduced no new cause of action, but was necessary to obviate a variance between the proof and some of the particulars of the declaration, and was properly allowed. Stevenson v. Mudgett, 10 N. H. 338, 340; Barrett v. Salisbury Manf. Co., 28 N. H. 440, 452; Davis v. Hill, 41 N. H. 336; Bailey v. Smith, 43 N. H. 409; Taylor v. Dustin, 43 N. H. 493; Stearns v. Wright, 50 N. H. 293; Cahill v. Terrio, 55 N. H. 571; Gilman v. Cate, 56 N. H. 160, 165, 166; Burnham v. Plant, 57 N. H. 41.

¶2 Exception overruled.

Bingham, J., did not sit.
/58/nh/335 · .json · Public domain