HARTFORD -- Scuppy wasn't on trial before the state Supreme
Court on Tuesday, but he became the poster horse in a
controversial case that could result in higher insurance rates
for the owners of the state's 50,000 horses.  In a hearing that
cited case law as far back as 1699 -- and, in particular, a 1912
case in New Haven -- lawyers for a Milford farmer warned that
hundreds of years of horse ownership could be changed if the
high court rules that the animals are naturally vicious.  But
the attorneys for a man whose son was bitten by Scuppy at
Timothy Astriab's Glendale Farms in May 2006 told the six-judge
panel that the man merely wants the case sent back to the
Superior Court level, where the liability case can proceed on
its merits.  During an hour-long hearing, Hartford attorney
Steven L. Seligman said that the horse had no history of biting
when Anthony Vendrella Sr., who was at the farm buying plants,
held up his young son, who was bitten on the cheek by Scuppy
from behind a 5-foot fence.  Astriab told H