PIG BREAKS BOUNDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19527, 9 July 1925, Page 7

PIG BREAKS BOUNDS.

UNSUCCESSFUL CLAIM FOR DAMAGES.

MAGISTRATE REGRETS DECISION

(Feom Ode Own Coheesi-ondent.) ELTHAM, July 8. In October last the 15-year-old son of Mr J, M. Gatenby, a farmer at Mangatoki, found a boar near his father’s pigsties and attempted to drive it home. Just as the boar was going through a hole in tho hedge the boy struck it with a stick. This enraged the boar, which turned and attacked the boy, ripping his leg and inflicting severe injuries.' The pig was destroyed the following day. The boar was owned by a neighbour, Mr Rogers, and Gatenby recently sued Rogers for £3B 4s damages alleged to have been sustained. At the hearing evidence produced was to the effect that the boar was a dangerous animal, continually making hostile demonstrations against human beings, and when at largo was a source of danger. Defendant’s boar, it was alleged, was allowed to run loose in a paddock bounded on the one side by the dividing fence. Plaintiff also kept pigs, but hold them properly controlled and confined, whereas defendant’s boar frequently trespassed, and plaintiff often chased it back and blocked up the hole in tho hedge. In giving reserved judgment, Mr A. W. Mowlem, S.M., dismissed the information on the grounds that the fence, a box hedge, between tho two properties was not a legal fence within tho meaning of the Fencing Act. . .

“This case is, in my opinion, an instance of the rather harsh ■working of our law,” said the magistrate in commenting on the decision. It seemed unfair that a. man should be allowed to keep such a dangerous animal at large, more particularly alongside a neighbour’s boundary fence. If farmers wished to live in harmony they should keep their pigs shut up or see that there was a legal fence between the properties. He was very sorry for plaintiff and sincerely hoped there was an opportunity of an appeal on law against Mr Justice Hosking's decision of 1905 upon which the magistrate said he had based his judgment.