United States

JACQUELINE CONRAD, Plaintiff–Appellant, v. SUSAN CATAPANO and JIM CATAPANO, Defendants–Respondents

Summary:

Plaintiff was injured by defendants' dog after being knocked to the ground. The plaintiff had her dog over to defendants' house for a "doggie play date" and the dogs were running off-leash in the fenced yard.The lower court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on plaintiff's claims of negligence and absolute liability, finding that the defendants had not prior knowledge of the dog's propensity to run into people. The Court found that there were genuine issues of material fact as to defendants' prior knowledge of the dog's proclivities to become "hyper" in the presence of other dogs. Thus, the decision to grant summary judgment was reversed and the matter remanded for trial. Notably, the Court did state that it shared "the motion judge's observation that plaintiff may well be comparatively at fault here for choosing to stand in the backyard while the three unleashed dogs ran around."

McDougall v. Lamm

Summary:

This New Jersey case considered whether a pet owner should be permitted to recover for emotional distress caused by observing the traumatic death of that pet. The incident giving rise to this case occurred when plaintiff's "maltipoo" dog was attacked and killed by a neighbor's larger dog as she was walking her dog. Plaintiff then brought an action against the owner of the larger dog, alleging negligence and emotional distress. The lower court entered partial summary judgment to the owner of the large dog on the emotional distress claim, and a bench trial awarded plaintiff replacement costs for her dog. On appeal here, the Supreme Court recognized that while many individuals develop close, familial bonds with their pets, expanding a cause of action for emotional distress due to the loss of a pet would create "ill-defined and amorphous cause of action that would elevate the loss of pets to a status that exceeds the loss of all but a few human beings."

State v. Taffet (unpublished)

Summary:

The State of New Jersey, through the Borough of Haddonfield, appeals from the final judgment of the Law Division, which reversed the finding of the municipal court that defendant's dog is a potentially dangerous dog pursuant to N.J.S.A. 4:19-23(a) as well as the imposition of certain measures to mitigate any future attacks. Defendant, a resident of Haddonfield, owns, breeds, and shows four Rhodesian Ridgebacks kept at his home in a residential neighborhood. The Superior Court concluded that the Law Division's did not properly defer to the trial court's credibility determinations and were not supported by sufficient credible evidence. The court found that the dog's dual attacks causing bodily injury to two individuals were undisputed, and along with evidence of more recent intimidating activity in the neighborhood, the municipal court could have reasonably concluded that the dog posed a more serious threat to cause bodily injury to another.

LaPlace v. Briere

Summary:

In this New Jersey case, a horse owner brought an action against the person who exercised his horse while the horse was being boarded at the defendant's stable. While the stable employee was "lunging" the horse, the horse reared up, collapsed on his side with blood pouring from his nostrils, and then died. On appeal of summary judgment for the defendant, the court held that the person who exercised horse could not be liable under the tort of conversion as she did not exercise such control and dominion over the horse that she seriously interfered with plaintiff's ownership rights in the horse. While the court found that a bailment relationship existed, the plaintiff failed to come forward with any additional evidence that established the horse was negligently exercised or that the exercise itself was a proximate cause of its death. The grant of summary judgment for the defendants was affirmed.

State v. Kess

Summary:

After receiving a call to investigate a complaint of the smell of dead bodies, a health department specialist found defendant burying sixteen to twenty-one garbage bags filled with decaying cats in her backyard (later investigations showed there were about 200 dead cats total). Defendant also housed 35-38 cats in her home, some of whom suffered from serious illnesses. Because the humane officer concluded that defendant failed to provide proper shelter for the cats by commingling the healthy and the sick ones, he charged her with thirty-eight counts of animal cruelty, in violation of N.J.S.A. 4:22-17, one for each of the thirty-eight cats found in her home. While defendant claimed that she was housing the cats and attempting to nurse them back to health so they could be adopted out, the court found sufficient evidence that "commingling sick animals with healthy ones and depriving them of ventilation when it is particularly hot inside is failing both directly and indirectly to provide proper shelter."

Liberty Humane Soc., Inc. v. Jacobs

Summary: This case concerns the authority of the Department of Health to revoke certifications of animal control officers who willfully contravened the state law on impounding dogs.   The court found that “[s] ince the Department acknowledged that it is charged with revoking certifications of animal control off icers when those officers pose ‘ a threat to the health and safety’ of the community, it should follow that allegations of officers willfully and illegally taking a dog from its owner and falsifying records to claim it a stray so as to expose it to adoption by another or euthanasia calls for the Department to take action. ” It would be both arbitrary and capricious for the Department to ignore its duty to determine if revocation of certification is required.

New Jersey Soc. for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v. New Jersey Dept. of Agriculture

Summary:

This New Jersey case concerns several challenges to the adoption of livestock regulations by the state Department of Agriculture.   Specifically, several animal welfare groups contended that several of the regulations were inhumane and in violation of the state’s legislative mandate to issue humane livestock standards. The Superior Court of New Jersey, appellate division, agreed with the Department, holding that the challenged regulations are consistent with the agency's legislative mandate, and are neither arbitrary, nor unreasonable. This Judgment was Affirmed in Part, Reversed in Part by New Jersey Soc. for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v. New Jersey Dept. of Agriculture, 196 N.J. 366,955 A.2d 886 (N.J., 2008).

Stoffels v. Harmony Hill Farm

Summary:

An owner of a horse farm acquired a new horse that had only recently been broken in and got a woman with some health problems to ride the horse. The horse bucked and threw the defendant off the horse causing injury. The court held that even though riders assume the risk of most injuries, a horse owner can be liable for failure to take reasonable measures to match the rider to a suitable horse.

Arguello v. Behmke

Summary:

The adoption of a dog was invalidated and the court ordered its return to the original owner. The shelter's placement of the dog with a new family was invalid because the shelter agreed that it would hold the dog for a certain period of time.