Snow v. Judy

The four-year-old plaintiff recovered a judgment on a jury’s verdict for $8,500 for injuries sustained when he was riding sidesaddle on a bicycle operated by his fifteen-year-old brother and ran into a single strand of barbed wire stretched across a lane on the farm of the defendant. Defendant appeals. The integrity of this judgment rests squarely upon the nature of the duty owed by the defendant to the minor plaintiff.

The plaintiff and other members of his family were longtime friends of the defendant and were visiting on his farm as social guests. A brother of the plaintiff, using a new…