Leash Catcher Case
The linen catcher case is a famous case study in jurisprudence that explains the conditions for the existence of negligence . It is based on a judgment of the Reichsgericht dated March 23, 1897 (RGSt 30, 25).
facts
The defendant worked as a coachman since October 1895 and drove a cab drawn by two horses . Both the accused and his employer knew of one of the horses that it was a so-called "line catcher". This is the name given to draft horses that attract attention because they constantly try to pinch the line between the tail and the buttocks and tear it down, which makes it much more difficult to steer the vehicle.
On July 19, 1896, the horse actually jammed the leash. While attempting to loosen the leash, the defendant lost control of the horse, which broke out in an uncontrolled manner, breaking the leg of the victim who happened to be in the way. The defendant was then charged with negligent bodily harm . The appeals court acquitted him. The public prosecutor's office has now appealed to the Reichsgericht.
Summary of the judgment
The Reichsgericht now had to answer the question whether there was negligence in the criminal sense, i.e. whether the accused had violated his duty of care to an extent that led to the criminal offense of negligent bodily harm.
The court denied that. The court found that by using the horse known as the line catcher, the defendant had accepted that it might successfully pinch the line and, if the handler tried to loosen the line, dash forward in an uncontrolled manner in a panic. In any case, the accident was therefore predictable. In the opinion of the court, however, this alone was not sufficient to establish criminal negligence, since with almost every act of a person in everyday life there is a foreseeable risk that someone could possibly be harmed, and a criminal liability for all these acts is clearly not the will of the legislature would correspond. Rather, it must be added that the defendant has violated the necessary care that could be required of him in the individual case.
The court denied this on the basis that the defendant's refusal to drive the cab with this horse would have resulted in a high probability of losing his job. Since there was no social security in Germany at that time, the defendant would have got into existential hardship by losing his job. The accused found himself in an emergency position either to accept the danger posed by the line catcher and possible personal injury or to risk termination and thus his survival. The Reichsgericht decided here that the defendant could not be expected to exercise the necessary care under these circumstances and acquitted him.
Effect of the judgment
With this judgment, the "unreasonableness of norm-compliant behavior" was recognized for the first time as a criterion which, if present, can lead to the cessation of negligence and thus the cessation of criminal liability for an act itself. This criterion - even if there are minor opinions that no longer want to apply it today - is still largely recognized in the prevailing doctrine, which can also rely on the constant case law of the Reichsgericht and the Federal Supreme Court, which continued this case law.
The judgment is now a classic case study that is discussed in law studies.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joachim Vogel: § 15 . In: Leipziger Commentary , 12th edition, Volume 1 (§§ 1–31), Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 311089288X , p. 1114