Picture it, because Florida makes you picture it eventually. You are northbound on the Suncoast Parkway at 70 miles an hour, past the Citrus County line, and there is an emu in the center lane. Not a deer. An emu. Six feet of prehistoric confidence, standing in traffic with the poise of something that has never been told no.
You swerve. The guardrail wins. Now you have a totaled vehicle, a shoulder that needs surgery, and a legal question Florida’s appellate courts have never quite gotten around to answering.
First, the statute that does exist
Section 588.15 covers livestock, and it is worth reading closely because it does something people assume it does not.
Every owner of livestock who intentionally, willfully, carelessly, or negligently suffers or permits such livestock to run at large upon or stray upon the public roads of this state is liable in damages for all injury and property damage sustained by any person.
Notice what that is not. It is not strict liability. The words carelessly and negligently are doing the work. A cow on Cortez Boulevard is not automatically a payday. You have to show the owner did something, or failed to do something, that let the animal out. A gate left open. A fence down for weeks. A pattern of escapes the neighbors had complained about. Section 588.16 lets sheriffs, deputies, animal control and the Highway Patrol impound livestock found running at large, which means there is often a paper trail of prior incidents. That trail is the case.
The emu is not livestock, and that is not a loophole
Chapter 588 is an agricultural statute about agricultural animals. An emu on a hobby farm in Hernando County is not obviously within it, and I have found no Florida appellate decision resolving the question.
This disappoints people who want a statute. It should not, because the fallback is ordinary negligence, and ordinary negligence is often the better claim. A person who keeps a large flightless bird has a duty to use reasonable care to contain it. That duty does not require a statute. It requires a fence, a gate, and the attention a reasonable person gives to a creature that can outrun a bicycle.
Compare Florida’s dog bite statute, section 767.04, which does impose strict liability. Dogs got a statute. Emus did not. Everything else runs on negligence.
The defendant is usually not the animal’s owner alone
The owner is the obvious defendant. He is often not the solvent one, and often not the only one at fault. Who built the fence. Who was leasing the pasture. Who was hired to feed the animals that week and left the gate. Who owned the property. Whether a homeowners or farm policy responds, and whether it excludes exotic animals. In a serious injury case, the answer to who pays is almost never the answer to who let the bird out.
And the crash is still a crash
Whatever the animal was, the ordinary machinery applies. If you swerved into a guardrail with no other vehicle involved, this is a single vehicle crash and your own coverage does the heavy lifting. Personal injury protection under section 627.736 pays 80 percent of reasonable medical expenses and 60 percent of lost wages up to $10,000, and only if you receive initial care within fourteen days. Collision coverage handles the car. Whether uninsured motorist coverage responds depends on the facts and the policy language, a sentence that has decided a lot of Florida cases.
Two year statute of limitations under section 95.11(5)(a). The emu will not be available to testify.
The unfunny part
Hernando and Citrus counties are still rural in places. Fences fail. Animals get out. On a 70 mile per hour limited access highway, a loose animal is not a comic anecdote, it is a fatality waiting for the right Tuesday.
If an animal caused your crash in Hernando County, the question is not whether the story is absurd. It is who had a duty to keep it in. A Spring Hill car accident lawyer can find out.
External legal resource: Florida Statutes, section 588.15 (Permitting Livestock to Run at Large)
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