The Warning No Court Can Give You

About This Talk

Chapter 6 builds the forewarned animal and then dismantles it. Mu'ad means prone to this, so the owner should be warned, and it takes two acceptable witnesses on three different days; a hundred gorings, bitings, kickings or layings-upon in one day do not qualify, since the animal may have been disturbed that day and its conduct is not its pattern, while three pairs testifying on one day is left an unresolved doubt. The warning must be given in the owner's presence, from the verse that the owners shall be warned, and in a court of judges with semichah, from which the Rambam concludes outright that since semichah was nullified no animal is made mu'ad and these laws do not apply in the present age. Where the owner is a deaf mute, incompetent, a minor or overseas he is not liable and a guardian is appointed and warned, paying half from the ox's body while it is a tam and from his choicest property once warned on three days; oxen trained to gore each other for sport are not mu'adim toward each other and are not executed even for killing a person, since the verse means an ox that gores on its own initiative and not one that was prompted. A sale or gift returns the animal to tam status while a loan or deposit does not, the status also holding when a minor comes of age or a deaf mute regains his faculties; a mu'ad that stops goring becomes a tam even while it still butts, and the test of having stopped is that children play with it and it does not gore them. No record travels: mu'ad toward oxen is not mu'ad toward camels, toward humans not toward animals, toward young animals not toward older ones, toward Sabbaths not toward weekdays, and there are animals mu'ad only for alternate days or only at the sound of a shofar, while gorings on the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth of successive months require a fourth addition before the pattern counts; in doubtful cases the owner pays half, though a full seizure by the damaged party is not expropriated. Chapter 7 begins with the inference that if they did guard they are not liable, so a mu'ad properly tied and locked that broke loose pays nothing while a tam still pays half, which is why an ox mu'ad with one horn pays half with either. An animal injuring a person is treated as property damage, half from the body for a tam and full for a mu'ad but nothing for unemployment, embarrassment, pain or medical costs, which come from a verse about a man who blemishes his fellow, although an ox that injures its owner's father or burns a grain heap on Shabbat does create liability where the man's own hands would not. An ox brought into another's courtyard without permission leaves the courtyard owner exempt if his own ox gores it or his dog bites it, obliges its owner as in the public domain for goring, obliges him for water fouled on falling into a cistern but not for water fouled afterward, since the ox is then an obstruction and water is treated as a utensil, and leaves a courtyard owner who damaged it unknowingly exempt and one who damaged it knowingly liable in full, for he may expel the animal but not harm it. Damages are assessed rather than settled by handing over the wreckage, and the carcass belongs to the damaged owner, so a fall in its value before trial is his loss and a rise is divided, giving a hundred where a two hundred zuz ox's carcass fell from a hundred to eighty and ninety where it rose to a hundred and twenty, while an injured ox's loss is fixed at the time of the damage unless the wound kept worsening, the profit it never earned is grama and unpaid, fattening does not extend the lien on the goring ox's body though market appreciation does, and the damager raises the carcass from the cistern himself. Chapter 8 restricts the law to an ox belonging to a colleague, exempting consecrated and ownerless animals in both directions, readmitting one that was consecrated, disqualified and redeemed, collecting a peace offering's damage from its meat and not the altar portions and a thanksgiving offering's not from its loaves, with the injured party and his company eating meat worth half the loss in a holy manner, and requiring one owner both at the damage and at the trial so that a consecration or renunciation in between kills the lien. A Jew's ox goring a gentile's carries no liability on the stated grounds that their law does not hold a man responsible for his livestock, while a gentile's ox goring a Jew's pays in full as a penalty so that they will guard their animals. A tam's lien is on its body, so a sale before trial does not release it and the buyer recovers from the seller, a consecration takes effect and the victim redeems and collects, meat and gifts remain reachable, and after the trial sale, consecration and gift are all void and seizing creditors do not keep it; a mu'ad's lien is on the owner's whole estate, so all those acts stand and a creditor who leads the ox away acquires it, movables are expropriated first even poor ones, and heirs are charged on the land of least value until the Geonim allowed movables. The treatise then closes by refusing inference: no damages, no atonement payment and no execution of an animal without acceptable witnesses, not shepherds or servants though they alone are in the stalls, not women or minors, and not the ox known to gore found standing beside a gored carcass, of which we do not say that it is certain.