Court awards $45,000 for cat killed by neighbor’s dog
A Seattle woman whose cat was mauled to death by a neighbor’s dog was awarded more than $45,000 recently in a wrongful death lawsuit against the owner of the dog. It is believed to be the largest damage award given in this country for the death of a cat.
Until recently, dogs and cats were legally considered mere possessions, like a lamp or a vase, and the courts would only assign them “replacement value”, with no consideration given to the owner’s personal relationship with the pet and the emotional distress of losing it. In the Seattle case, the woman had complained to her neighbor on more than one occasion about his dogs running loose. He had promised to build a fence but had not done so. One evening she returned from walking her dog and found the neighbor’s chow in her back yard with her cat in its mouth, biting and shaking it. When she confronted the dog it dropped the cat and she was able to chase it out of her yard, but the cat was dead, mangled to the point that she could hardly recognize it.
The dog’s owner was fined for a loose dog violation, but when the civil case was heard, he failed to appear in court. The judge found for the plaintiff and awarded her $30,000 for the loss of her cat and its “unique value”, plus $15,000 for emotional distress, and $480 for the cost of cremation and counseling. It is significant that the judgement in this case came from a judge and not a jury. Juries are thought by some to be more emotional and inclined toward larger awards that are sometimes excessive.
Big Brother out to get non-scoopers
Europeans love their dogs, and Vienna is no exception. There are 50,000 dogs registered in the city, and many more that belong to people who don’t bother to register them. The owners take good care of the dogs, and love to take them for walks around the city. The one thing that they do not seem to like about dogs is cleaning up after them.
The sidewalks of Vienna are covered with piles of dog droppings, and walking down the street without stepping in anything can be a challenge. There are laws requiring pet owners to pick up after their dogs, but most people ignore them, and few tickets are issued because the dog has to be caught in the act.
Now a local Vienna politician thinks he has the answer. He proposes registering the DNA of every dog in Vienna. Then whenever any droppings are found, they can be analyzed and matched up with the offending dog, and its owner can be punished. Manfred Juraczka, the city councilman who came up with this idea, claims that among the advantages of his plan is the fact that anyone who fails to pick up after his dog can count on being caught.
Other members of the city council, while agreeing that this is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with, felt that there are probably ways to deal with it that do not involve creating a police state.
According to Juraczka, it costs the city between $3.80 and $6.30 for each pile of poop that has to be cleaned up. He didn’t say why it costs so much, but for an average of five bucks a pile, Erin Erman and Cara Brown, owners of Dirty Work Pooper Scooper Service, might want to think about starting an international division.
