Baker v. Howard County Hunt

188 A. 223 (1936)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P acquired a small farm of about sixty-five acres. Eventually, D and wife occupied it as a permanent home. P was the executive secretary of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. P began a series of experiments on rabbits to determine whether over a long period a well-balanced diet would result in improving the stock. He kept the rabbits used in those experiments on the farm. P also raised hogs and chickens, kept a garden, and raised buckwheat and other crops. P and his wife lived there intermittently until about 1932, and from that time on he has resided there permanently. D was an association formed to hunt foxes. D occupied a farm in the same area as P. D hunted three days a week throughout the hunting season, from early in September to April, over a territory which includes P's farm. P first noticed D in 1931. P ignored them. By 1933 his stock of rabbits had greatly increased, and the dogs went after them. His wife attempted to drive them off, and she was bitten. D apologized in part, but the destruction continued and escalated. Dogs trampled his crops, broke some hot frames, disturbed his rabbits and his chickens, and so annoyed Mrs. Baker that she left the place, and that on one occasion in February 1936, he had been compelled to shoot several of them to get them off his property, where they were frightening his chickens. P sued D to enjoin D and their dogs from hunting across P’s property. The court dismissed the case. P appealed. D claimed that P's hands were unclean due to his shooting of the dogs and because there was a remedy at law for damages.