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Friday, March 29, 2024

Unleashed dogs are legally vicious, Georgia Supreme Court rules

State Court
Dog bite

ATLANTA (Legal Newsline) – A dog not on a leash should legally be considered vicious, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled in a case involving an attack that killed a dog and injured her owner.

Justice Carla Wong McMillian wrote the court’s June 16 opinion in a lawsuit against a towing company whose dog escaped its property and killed another dog while it was being walked in 2015.

The dog had been kept on the premises of S&S Towing & Recovery in Paulding County but it apparently escaped that day.

About 1,000 feet away was the residence of Michael Charnota, who was walking his dog Katie. The tow yard dog, Tucker, attacked and killed Katie, then seriously injured Charnota as he carried Katie into his home.

Charnota’s lawsuit made a claim under a state law that imposes liability on “A person who owns or keeps a vicious or dangerous animal of any kind and who, by careless management or by allowing the animal to go at liberty, causes injury to another person.”

In the trial court, S&S asked for a finding that Charnota could not presume Tucker was vicious because he was unleashed, as a state court requires. The trial court affirmed the presumption but allowed the issue to be appealed immediately.

The Supreme Court affirmed as S&S claimed the presumption violated due process.

The second sentence of the law reads: “In proving vicious propensity, it shall be sufficient to show that the animal was required to be at heel or on a leash by an ordinance of a city, county, or consolidated government, and the said animal was at the time of the occurrence not at heel or on a leash.”

The case will move on, and Charnota will be allowed to use that law to argue Tucker was vicious.

“We recognize that the legislature’s definition of ‘vicious’ in the second sentence of OCGA § 51-2-7 departs from the common understanding of the term and as parsed out in the common law, but the legislature could rationally conclude that for this statutory tort, it would be a better use of resources to limit the need to litigate over whether the animal is ‘vicious’ where there is a local ordinance requiring restraint and the animal is running at large,” Justice McMillian wrote.

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