Man Shoots, Kills Dog That Bit Grandson

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A man shot his dog after it bit his grandson Saturday afternoon, according to police. Delbert Preston, 6, was visiting his grandfather, George Flaugher, in Felicity-Franklin Township when a 4-year-old Chow tied to a chain bit the boy on the head and neck, police said.

WLWT

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good. Someone taking care of a serious problem immediately. My daughter was viciously attacked by a St. Bernard a year ago. That dog was put down by a vet, mainly because the insurance company for the owners insisted on it. That dog had been chasing kids around for years, should have been shot long ago. Notice the kid in the story above is in critical condition.

Lan-

first of all, I am sorry to hear about the incident with your daughter.

But you alluded to what the key is in these cases. The general rule used to be the "one free bite" rule, i.e. a domestic pet more or less had one freebie, then after that strict liability kicked in. In the case of wild animals, strict liability is always the rule, there is no free bite.

In recent times, that has been eroded. Indiana recently passed a law that protect mail carriers; you are strictly liable if the mail carrier gets bitten, even if it is the dog's first bite. Many states have done away with the free bite altogther.

My problem there is, when you have a strict liability situation, it hinders your ability to raise any defenses. I had a case one time where the neighbor's kid did get bit, but that was after he and his buddy were taunting and tormenting my guy's dog. Now, thanks to my brilliant legal prowess, I got the case dismissed but it did put my guy on notice that his one bite was used. Sure enough, a few months later, the dog bit a girl and my guy claimed that she was taunting it as well. Maybe, maybe not, but it didn't matter because strict liability applied.

In your example, if the dog had shown such tendencies, then I have no problem with putting him down.

I tried to post this before Greg broke the internets, buy I HATE ALL CHOWS.

I won't post details.

But I'm really, really glad we are well armed.

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Originally posted by Lew:
Lan-

first of all, I am sorry to hear about the incident with your daughter.

But you alluded to what the key is in these cases. The general rule used to be the "one free bite" rule, i.e. a domestic pet more or less had one freebie, then after that strict liability kicked in. In the case of wild animals, strict liability is always the rule, there is no free bite.

In recent times, that has been eroded. Indiana recently passed a law that protect mail carriers; you are strictly liable if the mail carrier gets bitten, even if it is the dog's first bite. Many states have done away with the free bite altogther.

My problem there is, when you have a strict liability situation, it hinders your ability to raise any defenses. I had a case one time where the neighbor's kid did get bit, but that was after he and his buddy were taunting and tormenting my guy's dog. Now, thanks to my brilliant legal prowess, I got the case dismissed but it did put my guy on notice that his one bite was used. Sure enough, a few months later, the dog bit a girl and my guy claimed that she was taunting it as well. Maybe, maybe not, but it didn't matter because strict liability applied.

In your example, if the dog had shown such tendencies, then I have no problem with putting him down.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is good information, because recently The Big Sexy had company and one woman tried to attack The Big Sexy while he was holding his sweet, little Cougar, and the mutt tried to bite the offender. Then later, another woman picked up the poor, helpless dog and little Cougar growled. Then a little child taunted Cougar...

Well, truth be told Reason, I have a problem with a situation where a person taunts an animal, no matter what it is, and it reacts accordingly, and yet I'm unable to raise that as a defense because it's a strict liability situation.

But the theory behind it is that the law wants to discourage people from owning animals like cougars, lions, snakes, etc. If you do, fine, but then you will be held strictly liable for any consequences.

Personally, I would do away with the whole strict liability angle and simply invoke the ordinary rules of negligence- if you are injured by an animal, and you can show that the owner did not use reasonable care, and you can link the two...then you win. And even in the case of wild animals, you'd still be ok because you would be able to show a higher degree of "reasonable" care, i.e. it's good enough to leave a dog on a chain, but that's not enough with a cougar.

However, that's fine in theory but unworkable in practice because there are so many pets that the courts can't handle all the cases anyway. So my unsolicited, free legal advice of the day is- if you are a pet owner, use all reasonable care you can imagine. Check your homeowner policy, dog-bites are typically exlcuded absent endorsement. And if your pet has ever bitten or attacked anyone before, consider yourself to be strictly liable if it happens again, even if it's tormented by some brat down the street who deserves it.

Hadn't heard of the one bite rule before and now that we have a dog, I'll hafta pay attention to that. In the story I linked at the start, the chow bit the kid so badly he is in critical condition in a hospital. I hope the one bite rule doesn't apply to that sort of attack.

<font color="#FFFFAA" size="1">[ November 16, 2005 07:34 PM: Message edited by: LanDroid ]</font>

Lest I be accused of malpractice here, I should point out that Indiana still has the one-bite rule. Ohio abolished it by statute, at least as applies to dogs (the statute specifically names dogs, not cats or any other housepet). But Ohio does carve an exception for trespass (i.e. a burglar who was bitten would not be able to recover) and even for tormenting/abusing by the victim.

I'm not licensed in Kentucky, but for the record, and in typical neck fashion, Kentucky's statute allows a person who observes a dog attack to seize the dog. Git 'r done. Again, no mention of cats.

And BTW, an unwritten rule in personal injury law is that, everything else notwithstanding, if the injury will sicken the jury either due to its severity or circumstances, then you can throw out your defenses.

For example, years ago we had a welder get severely injured due to his own negligence. He neglected to gas-free a pipe before he started to weld (and yes, he was an experienced welder and yes, he knew better). Anyway, acid sprayed onto his face and he was severely disfigured. There were several insurers involved, and I think the total settlement came to around $4M or so. Now, if you follow the law technically, his own neligence would have barred any recovery. However, with an injury that severe, and considering it occurred in the line of duty, he did recover. And in all honesty, as strict as I am in my intepretation of the law, I can't say that I aruged with the result (granted, all the money in the world wouldn't have been enough for him).

So in Lan's example, if the child was really hurt, it wouldn't matter if the one-bite rule was in effect (but I assume it was in Ohio which, like I said, is going to follow a more quasi-strict liability analysis anyway).