I just realized that in my example somebody will site that "I had a normal fence and somehow my dog got out"
Well there is always a precedent somewhere. If you went to a zoo and the tiger got out and ate your child right in front of you, the court will want to know that the zoo did more than a reasonable job to keep the tiger in. It will look at the design of the fence, how it was maintained, etc etc etc.
If you have a large agile dog, and just a regular fence, the courts will look at that accordingly, and say "you should have known better". If you built a 16 foot high concrete fence, and there was suddenly an earthquake, and your fence crumbled before you could reasonably grab your dog, and it got out and killed a child, the court would look at that too.
No scenario can be presented that means we can't have much stiffer laws on the books holding owners responsible for what their pets do. It is long, long, long overdue.
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