HORSES RUNNING AWAY. 331 



that horses that have once run away are less safe thereafter. 

 This may bear upon the degree of care which should be exer- 

 cised by the owner in their management. But does it place 

 the horses under the ban of the law and make the owner lia- 

 ble, in the absence of negligence, if he uses them thereafter, 

 and they again run away and cause injury? It may very well 

 be that horses may be so unmanageable that they cannot be 

 driven in the public streets without manifest danger. If this 

 was established in a particular case, we see no reason why 

 their use by the owner, with knowledge of their vicious char- 

 acter, should not make him responsible for any consequent 

 injury. . . . The cause of the running away of the horses on 

 both occasions was fright, naturally following from the con- 

 duct of third persons, for those acts the defendant was not 

 responsible, and the fact that defendant knew of the circum- 

 stances of the first runaway did not, we think, justify the sub- 

 mission to the jury of the question whether the horses were 

 vicious or dangerous or unsafe to be used in driving along 

 the street." ^^i 



The lack of ordinary care must be proved to entitle the 

 plaintiff to recover, and greater care is required where the 

 horse is near a throng of people than where it is in a less fre- 

 quented place. To show the use of ordinary care, the de- 

 fendant was held entitled to introduce evidence of the direc- 

 tions of one servant to another respecting the management 

 of the horse just before its running away.-'^^ 



One whose servant so negligently drives in a public street 

 as to come into collision with a carriage and cause the horses 

 drawing it to take fright and run away, is liable in damages 

 to one who is injured by the runaway horse.^"* But where 



'" Benoit v. Troy & L. R. Co., 154 N. Y. 223. 



See Doyle v. Detroit Omnib. Line Co., 105 Mich. 195, cited in § 85, 

 supra. 



"" Sullivan v. Scripture, 3 Allen (Mass.) 565. 



'^° McDonald v. Snelling, 14 Allen (Mass.) 290. And see Thomas v. 

 Royster, 98 Ky. 206; Langlois v. Drouin, Rap. Jud. Quebec, 13 C. S. 49. 



