As anyone who goes to a pet store knows, customers frequently bring their pets with them. Unfortunately for Uncle Bill’s Pet Center in Indianapolis, ten-year-old Travis Post had been petting rabbits, and thus “smelled like food” when pet store regular Christopher Simms allowed Travis to hold Simms’s ten-foot python while Simms talked to Travis’s mother. The family has sued Uncle Bill’s (as well as Simms), claiming they should have done more to protect Travis from the resulting attack. “‘Uncle Bill’s had a duty to keep their premises in a way that is safe for invitees,’ [family attorney E. Ralph] Hoover said. ‘Obviously, it’s not safe when you allow people to bring wild animals in and allow them to be around children.'” (Vic Ryckaert, “Uncle Bill’s faces suit after python bit a boy”, Indianapolis Star, Dec. 10) (via Obscure Store).

Hoover is essentially asking a jury to find that pet stores have a legal duty to either (a) bar children or (b) use employee time to screen customers, anticipating in advance which combination of customer and pet will be dangerous to other customers when their mothers leave them unattended. The likely real-world result, if damages are assessed, will be that insurers will require pet stores to bar outside animals. (Dog bites are, after all, much more common than snake bites.)

Now, perhaps we as a society want to create rules that bar animals from pet stores so that people like Christopher Simms and Travis Post’s mother only let small children handle gigantic snakes outside the confines of Uncle Bill’s Pet Center. But isn’t that a decision better made by a legislature considering the totality of the situation rather than a jury considering an individual case?

Filed under: Indiana