No Compensation. The injured party offered the dog a biscuit.

The Court ruled on a case concerning a man’s request for compensation from the owner of a dog who, by hitting him, made him fall and broke his leg. The injured party had called the dog over to offer him some cookies. This circumstance, according to the Court, contributed to causing a reaction of excessive exuberance of the dog, manifested “in the race towards the object of desire, in order to recover it and express one’s gratitude, which caused the collision”. The dog’s manifestation of affection, according to the judge, can also occur in a disproportionate and unpredictable way. Therefore the injury is charged exclusively to the injured person as “he himself initiated the etiological process from which the accident derived”, considering that the responsibility of the dog owner pursuant to art. 2052 of the Italian Civil Code it cannot be extended to include the voluntary acts put in place by the injured party. The sentence follows: Court of Milan, section Civil X, sentence of 5 June 2017, n. 6345