BIG damn bobcat

I enjoyed the "Beastmaster" series by Andre Norton.    Most of the enhanced animals didn't speak out loud (mouth not the right shape), but communicated telepathically with their bonded partner (typical Norton). 

And the less said about the movies and TV series "based" on Norton's work, the better.  After the first movie, Norton would never consider allowing any more of her work to be adapted.  It's a shame, I remember reading a damn fine treatment of "The Time Traders" back in the 80s.

"however..."

Oh, I'd like to say that was a surprise... but it really wasn't.

I had no idea that "Beastmaster" was an Andre Norton joint! I did see the movie a whole bunch of times, as it seemed to always be on TV. I heard once that it was the second most played movie on cable, after "Gone with the Wind." (Hence the joke that HBO stood for "Hey, Beastmaster's on!")

I always thought it was sort of silly that dude could speak to animals because he was born in a cow. But was definitely an awesomely silly movie...

The differences between the Beastmaster movies and the book series don't even bear talking about.  I understand her estate with several unpublished books has been settled.  With any luck there'll be another in the batch.  I'm aware of three published books in the series.

"however..."

Oh, I'd like to say that was a surprise... but it really wasn't.

Is that girl cursed or something? She seems to be getting into trouble a lot...

This one I'd only consider only partially Emily's  fault if at all... 

Yes she brought the exotic animals, but (As far as we are told) the escaped crow was not one of the animals she brought...

The responsible party should be the owner of the crow, who failed to keep her pet under proper control.  Presumably if the crow hadn't gotten loose, there wouldn't have been a problem.

Jeff responded reasonably to the attack by the crow - he defended himself using his available weapons against an initiation of force against him...  Again at least from what we are shown, the crow was merely scared off, not killed, and presumably Jeff stopped his response once the crow went elsewhere.

The animals that fled and trashed the place, again responsibility of their owners - and possibly bad AI programming that didn't put a "freeze" command option in any critters big enough that their owners couldn't control them. 

On that basis, I could see holding Emily responsible for damage attributable to her store's critters, but not that caused by others... 

Even given the above, I would tend to say the proper ruling should be non-forseeable accident  / act of God, and the major responsibility of the location's insurance company under the same coverage as it should have for other disasters of unpredictable cause....

There didn't appear to be any wilful negligence, and the stampede was the result of a relatively random train of non-predictable events.  To hold someone seriously liable for something like this would discourage any sort of public activity due to the fact that one can't avoid the risk by taking reasonable care...

This is very different from somebody pulling a gun and shooting a presumed suspicious person, where there was a definite choice to act, and an ability to assess responsibility for that choice...

ex-Gooserider

Excellent analysis. However, the problem with such a clusterfuck is that there is plenty of potential negligence to go around and plenty of victims, as well. Then you have to sort out which negligence caused which damage. In the alternative, you could lump everyone together. Of course, Emily is not the sole responsible person, but she is a nexus and would need to be involved in any arbitration. Sv Rosenberg had Emily in front of him. Other parties would undoubtedly be pulled in as various participants complained and  videos of the event surfaced. As I said, an arbitration clusterfuck.

This one I'd only consider only partially Emily's  fault if at all... 

Yes she brought the exotic animals, but (As far as we are told) the escaped crow was not one of the animals she brought...

The responsible party should be the owner of the crow, who failed to keep her pet under proper control.  Presumably if the crow hadn't gotten loose, there wouldn't have been a problem.

Jeff responded reasonably to the attack by the crow - he defended himself using his available weapons against an initiation of force against him...  Again at least from what we are shown, the crow was merely scared off, not killed, and presumably Jeff stopped his response once the crow went elsewhere.

The animals that fled and trashed the place, again responsibility of their owners - and possibly bad AI programming that didn't put a "freeze" command option in any critters big enough that their owners couldn't control them. 

On that basis, I could see holding Emily responsible for damage attributable to her store's critters, but not that caused by others... 

Even given the above, I would tend to say the proper ruling should be non-forseeable accident  / act of God, and the major responsibility of the location's insurance company under the same coverage as it should have for other disasters of unpredictable cause....

There didn't appear to be any wilful negligence, and the stampede was the result of a relatively random train of non-predictable events.  To hold someone seriously liable for something like this would discourage any sort of public activity due to the fact that one can't avoid the risk by taking reasonable care...

This is very different from somebody pulling a gun and shooting a presumed suspicious person, where there was a definite choice to act, and an ability to assess responsibility for that choice...

ex-Gooserider

Excellent analysis. However, the problem with such a clusterfrack is that there is plenty of potential negligence to go around and plenty of victims, as well. Then you have to sort out which negligence caused which damage. In the alternative, you could lump everyone together. Of course, Emily is not the sole responsible person, but she is a nexus and would need to be involved in any arbitration. Sv Rosenberg had Emily in front of him. Other parties would undoubtedly be pulled in as various participants complained and  videos of the event surfaced. As I said, an arbitration clusterfrack.

I would expect an event like this to have video recordings from multiple points of view.  These could be used to untangle the "Gordian clusterfrack" and determine individual negligence and compensation.  I would also expect that they have the technology to do this untangling in an automated fashion, given the state of current state-of-the-art image automated image analysis.

It may be possible to do a sort on who was the victim vs. negligent, but I don't know that it would be all that helpful - not to mention messy cases like the random pet owner who's critter was damaged during the stampede, while causing other property damage...  Or what about the pet owner's critter that damaged another critter?

Note that under current legal theory (as I understand it) a critter is considered not "mentally competent" so the owner is held responsible for it's actions - but again the owners are arguably not negligent since the stampede was not a reasonably foreseeable event...

I don't see a clean way to resolve this even given a microscopic playback and determination of who did what, which is why I'd stick each party (or their insurance)  with responsibility for their own damages, but not hit them for damages to others.

ex-Gooserider

What is that situation, anyway:
Annual/Traditional activity gone awry?
Publicity stunt gone awry?
Individual people's oversights leading to individual people's pets getting out of hand?
One way it's the arranging institutions responsibility, the other it's the shop's, the last it's a truly distributive responsibility.

What is that situation, anyway:
Annual/Traditional activity gone awry?
Publicity stunt gone awry?
Individual people's oversights leading to individual people's pets getting out of hand?
One way it's the arranging institutions responsibility, the other it's the shop's, the last it's a truly distributive responsibility.

The 'Blessing of the Animals' service/procession is a regular event, and would probably be a big deal on a remote asteroid like Ceres by giving folk a taste of 'home'.

As an aside, the strip of the stampede shows a male lion running away in an 'instinctive response' to an enraged large cat. I'm sorry, but one of the two major biological functions of a male lion is 'dealing with' other large cats (the other being impregnating 'his' females). As I see it, the lion's instinctive response to "GROWRR MRROWR" would be a "ROAR" and a pounce.

What is that situation, anyway:
Annual/Traditional activity gone awry?
Publicity stunt gone awry?
Individual people's oversights leading to individual people's pets getting out of hand?
One way it's the arranging institutions responsibility, the other it's the shop's, the last it's a truly distributive responsibility.

I would say, "all of the above"....

Per strip 978 it is an annual event - the Feast Day of St. Assisi, with reminiscence by Libby of past events.  Presumably organized by the Catholics, but apparently an "all are welcome" social occasion regardless of the event.  We are not told if the venue is property of a church, or some other entity(ies) that it is rented from, or donated (good deal for area businesses, as it's cheap PR, and brings in extra traffic (customers))

Libby and Anton  want to take advantage of the event for publicity - no evidence they asked the organizers for permission, but no evidence they didn't either.  Would have been nice if they did, but presumably not required.  It isn't just one-sided in any case, as they are making the parade a better show, for whatever that's worth....  Per strip 981, other businesses also show off their animals in the parade.

It isn't clear if the Crow was part of Libby's stock, or not, (would be worse for her if it was since she is responsible for her critters) but my working assumption is that it wasn't; the person it seemed to have escaped from didn't look familiar and she wasn't in fancy costume like the other FF animal handlers.  Jeff the bobcat was NOT part of her stock, he owns Sv. Katz (per strip 979)  It appears in strip 983 that at least some of Libby's stock, particularly the elephant she was riding, did NOT participate in the stampede, and that many of the privately owned pets DID.

I would agree the stampede as drawn did seem a bit odd - most of the animals portrayed as fleeing were predators - less likely to be scared, and more likely to want to check out the action to see if there are any leftover snack-bits laying around...  Also many of the shown animals are big - again less likely to be scared...  OTOH a stampede of pet mice just isn't impressive (not to mention less likely to be destructive...) call it "artistic license" 

I can't see any signs of negligence on the part of the organizers / venue owners.  Yes, they put on the event, but that shouldn't be grounds for liability

I also don't see any signs of negligence on the part of Libby and friends - they had no reason to expect the stampede situation, and appeared to have adequate handlers to deal with the expected normal sequence of events...

With the exception of the crow's owner, I don't see all that much evidence of negligence on the other pet owners either.  Even the crow lady is marginal, since she had no reason to expect the crow to attack Jeff (or any of the other felines in the parade) as opposed to flying off in search of the nearest corn field...

Tough situation to deal with...

ex-Gooserider

I don't see the crow 'attacking' Jeff. Looks to me like it was just flying along (at a regrettably low altitude) minding its own business, maybe making some noise (as crows are wont to do), and triggered a predator response.

I don't see the crow 'attacking' Jeff. Looks to me like it was just flying along (at a regrettably low altitude) minding its own business, maybe making some noise (as crows are wont to do), and triggered a predator response.

In the prose story, the crow did tease the bobcat with a peck. Either way, though, Jeff got pissed off by the crow. Probably, it would be better to think of the animals that stampeded as just being "spooked." Once one started to run, they all panicked and joined in.

Venue owners/Event instigators...
That's interesting. If we look at the big music festival tragedies, there is some kind of justification for a event holder liability, but of course, those are for-profit events. This one isn't even a "by invitation" event, so the event holders can't control the numbers attending (which might be seen as the major crux for liability in the festival cases).
But yeah, this is a case where the absence of a state nanny makes things interestingly different. No "inspector fiat" to define "safe", for instance.