Anyone want to speculate of what the court will do with this case?

Mike

Speculation:

Crucial information is missing from all the versions of the story I'm reading about if the dog was on a leash, within eyeshot of the owners, whatever.

Based upon what I assume is no on both those counts I'd be comfortable with the case being thrown out. Bottom line is that a stray dog wandered into a guy's yard and he stupidly took a shot at it with a BB gun. Both parties had a bit of the stupid in them, which means they're both responsible for the events of that day.

The problem is quantifying value to something like this. You can't unless the dog has special training, is of a distinct value, because as I look at my house dogs I can't think of a value to that look they give me that someone else would be able to put a number on. To me they are truly priceless.

My thesis, so to speak, in law school was about just this subject - Emotional Distress, the loss of a pet, and property laws. Without going long-winded, it is difficult to win significantly in a tort case based on IIED (Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress) or NIED (Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress) when it comes to the loss of a pet.

Animals are considered property in most jurisdictions and generally damages are limited to the value of the animal. However, there hae been cases where an award of damages for emotional distress is granted. In the 1981 case of Campbell et al v. Hawaii Board of Agriculture, a 9 yr old boxer bitch named Princess was shipped to Hawaii in 1975 after her family moved to Hawaii. Princess had to be quarantined and when the animal control staff went to transport her and other dogs to the quarantine kennel, they left the dogs in an unventilated van for over an hour causing Princess to die of heat exhaustion. The Campbells did not witness Princess' death nor did they see her deceased body.

Notwithstanding the court found that the death inflicted emotional distress on all but one family member. However, Hawaii has case law that states that serious mental harm can be inflicted when a person endures negligently inflicted *property* damage.

There are more and more cases about this subject and it is an interesting one for me as I am torn between my belief that the bond that we share with our animals supercedes their monetary valuation and my concern that raising animals above that of property is taking a big step in the direction of animal rights versus animal welfare.

I briefly scanned the article but I would say the plaintiff has a tough road ahead. If they let the dog wander into the defendant's property, I would argue that they contributed to the death of their dog. In my opinion, the plaintiffs sound a bit over the top in the article. If they treat their dogs like human kids perhaps they should have kept a better eye on where the dog was wandering.

They have been fighting this for 6 years??? And they claim their grief gets worse every day???? Is money going to fix this? OCD???

They initially received $4000 from the property owner, which they probably used up a long time ago for legal fees and plane tickets to court hearings. I wander if PETA is funding this?

I really don't see why this has gone on so long. Someone with some common sense should have thrown out the case a long time ago. But then common sense doesn't always apply to the law.

The part of this that the 'wonderful' owners of the dog are failing to get, is that their 'extremely well cared for' dog had the opportunity to be in someone else's yard. IMHO, that's extremely negligent, especially since the family was just visiting. How many of us would allow this to happen? Seriously?

I think it's really sad for the dog. I think the guy who did the shooting was probably fed up with other people's animals in his yard. I've been there for sure when I lived in more rural areas. I tied tin pie plates on stakes around the property and shot pellets at those (what a lovely picture, eh?) to scare animals off though, not at the animals themselves. I wouldn't have bothered probably except some of the dogs that showed up in my front yard were fairly aggressive, and inspired me to run an electric wire around the top of my fence to keep them from jumping in and getting to my dogs. The other option is animal control. He didn't need to to shoot the dog.

The folks that are milking this in court just want attention and money as far as I'm concerned. I wonder if they're still letting their 'well-cared-for' dogs roam around loose?

This is the second time here that failing to contain a dog has resulted in a dog's shooting death (where the story made the news, I'm sure it happens much more frequently). Loose dogs are a HUGE problem here, especially in the rural areas, primarily because nobody thinks it's a problem for their dog to run the neighborhood.

I don't think the 'dedicated' family is going to manage to change the laws, no matter how much time they spend riding the issue in court.

As much as would love to see animals (and dogs in particular) given more status than just "property", I don't see this case being any kind of spring board to making that happen.

With the involvment of PETA or HSUS this might go somewhere in terms of possible legislation (heaven forbid), as it aligns with their goals of animals being on the same level of humans, but that would mean disaster for all pet owners, imo. As much as it hurts to lose a pet, the owners were negligent, as was the property owner. Living in a rual area with a 500+ acre cattle farm next door, I fully believe in my neighbor's right to shoot any dog pestering his cattle, or even being on his property, and in my right to defend my property against strays that might harm my son or our pets. Although personally, I just use a big stick.

 Quote: ingrid rosenquist

In my opinion, the plaintiffs sound a bit over the top in the article. If they treat their dogs like human kids perhaps they should have kept a better eye on where the dog was wandering.

While they're obviously hyperpoling, we could take that analogy and say "They would still be faulty if they let their kids wander, but would they be responsible of their kid's death if their psycho neignbor shot them for walking on their lawn?"

 Quote: francis daigle

 Quote: ingrid rosenquist

In my opinion, the plaintiffs sound a bit over the top in the article. If they treat their dogs like human kids perhaps they should have kept a better eye on where the dog was wandering.

While they're obviously hyperpoling, we could take that analogy and say "They would still be faulty if they let their kids wander, but would they be responsible of their kid's death if their psycho neignbor shot them for walking on their lawn?"

A kid is a person, a dog is property just like a horse, cow, or car. Seems pretty simple to me. The guy was probably wrong for shooting the dog while being in city limits ( I assume that was the issue with shooting the dog) but wrong doesn't equal compensating someone for their mental issue of thinking their dog was a kid.

 Quote: francis daigle

 Quote: ingrid rosenquist

In my opinion, the plaintiffs sound a bit over the top in the article. If they treat their dogs like human kids perhaps they should have kept a better eye on where the dog was wandering.

While they're obviously hyperpoling, we could take that analogy and say "They would still be faulty if they let their kids wander, but would they be responsible of their kid's death if their psycho neignbor shot them for walking on their lawn?"

I have two young children and I wouldn't let them wander off to a neighbours house at all. Especially if we don't know the people. It is an unfortunate incident but needless to say there are leash laws for a reason and it is for the protection of everyone.

Dogs are not human and comparing a kid trespassing to an animal trespassing just does not fly. Many states have laws permitting the shooting of dogs that trespass in certain situations whereas it would be a homicide if it was human that was killed. Just because the owners look at their animals like kids in fur coats does not mean the legal system does as well ;-)

The guy who shot the dog pled to a count of animal cruelty and presumably paid the 4K restitution. The court now has to decide whether there is a viable claim for IIED/NIED and loss of companionship. In my opinion, that is going to be a difficult claim to succeed on if the dog was allowed to wander on someone else's property.