If you own cow and she get’s out on the highway and a car hits her, who is responsible? The landowner or the driver of the car?

Does the landowner have a duty to maintain good fences to insure their livestock don’t get out? Is it a different argument if a gate is left open? No respectable cattleman would have bad fences or leave his gate open, but there is always that wild animal that is going to tear up every fence in sight. And there is the issue of the weekend rancher that isn’t sure what a good fence is.

The common theme has always been if your cow is run over don’t claim it.

Of course if you have a cow that gets hit on the highway and the driver of the car admits they weren’t paying attention, that particular cow was the best one in the herd and worth three times as much as any other one in the herd.

On a little different subject, that happened to us one time when we were crossing a ranch with a large water line. Our mechanic replaced a battery in a machine and left the old one sitting out in the middle of the pasture. The cattle started messing with the old battery, eventually breaking it open and then supposedly ate the lead inside of it. Couple of them died and sure enough they were the prize two cows of the whole herd. They were so valuable that we had to get our insurance company involved rather than pay a reasonable amount. The end result was the insurance paid only a reasonable amount of a couple of hundred dollars each.

Back to fences. Following are a couple of articles I found discussing who is actually liable when cows run loose on the highway. If you understand what the real deal is, please clarify it for me.

https://agrilife.org/texasaglaw/2014/05/19/texas-fence-law-open-range-or-not-part-1/

https://agrilife.org/texasaglaw/2014/05/25/texas-fence-law-open-range-or-not-part-2/

I am filing this one under my “Do What?” file for now.