## Facts

- Harold W. Read alleged he was injured while riding his motorcycle on U.S. Highway 2 because goats owned by or under the control of Wiley Buckner were on the highway.
- Read sued Buckner in federal court (diversity jurisdiction), pleading two theories of recovery: (1) statutory liability and (2) common-law negligence.
- For the statutory claim, Read relied on Mont. Code Ann. (MCA) § 81-4-201 (1979), which makes it unlawful for an owner or person in control of swine, sheep, or goats to “willfully permit” them to run at large.
- Read sought damages under MCA § 81-4-202(1), which provides that a person who violates § 81-4-201 is guilty of a misdemeanor and “shall be liable in damage to any party injured thereby.”
- Buckner moved for summary judgment on the statutory claim, arguing the open-range provisions were first enacted in 1895 mainly to protect landowners and their property from roaming livestock, not to protect motorists from livestock on highways.
- Buckner argued that because automobiles were not in common use in 1895, motorists were not within the group the legislature meant to protect, and therefore Read could not recover under the statute.
- Read maintained that the statutory text (“any party injured thereby”) and later legislative developments supported applying the statute to roadway injuries, and that the statute could support civil liability if the “willfully permit” element was met.

## Issues

1. Whether MCA §§ 81-4-201 and 81-4-202(1) may be used by a motorist injured on a public highway by goats running at large, or whether the statutes are limited to protecting landowners’ property interests.
2. Whether Buckner was entitled to summary judgment on the statutory claim based on his argument that Read fell outside the statute’s protected group.

## Decision

- The court denied Buckner’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court held that the livestock-at-large statutes were not confined to protecting only landowners’ property and did not, as a matter of law, exclude motorists from the group entitled to seek damages.
- The court relied in part on the breadth of § 81-4-202(1)’s language imposing civil liability to “any party injured thereby,” and on the historical development of Montana’s open-range rules, including later legislative change (including amendments in 1945).
- The statutory claim, along with the separate negligence claim, remained for further proceedings; factual questions (including whether Buckner “willfully permit[ted]” the goats to run at large) were not resolved on this motion.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is improper when the movant’s entitlement to judgment depends on a contested reading of a statute’s scope and the court cannot conclude, as a matter of law, that the plaintiff is outside the statute’s coverage.
- When a statute authorizes damages to “any party injured thereby,” courts generally read that language as broad and not limited to one type of claimant unless the text or structure clearly imposes that limit.
- In construing Montana livestock-at-large provisions with open-range origins, courts may consider the state’s historical open-range system and later legislative amendments; the meaning of the current statute is not fixed solely by conditions existing at the time of the original 1895 enactment.
- A statutory prohibition on “willfully” allowing specified livestock to run at large can support civil liability under an accompanying damages provision if the plaintiff proves a violation and causation; whether the owner’s conduct was “willful” is commonly fact-bound.

## Conclusion

Read v. Buckner held that Montana’s goats-at-large statute and its damages provision were not limited to protecting landowners’ property and could, depending on proof of a statutory violation, allow a motorist injured by goats on a highway to seek damages; accordingly, the court denied the defendant’s request for summary judgment and allowed the case to proceed.


Read v. Buckner, 514 F. Supp. 281 (1981)