CHEYENNE, Wyo. (Legal Newsline) - A Wyoming family can’t win emotional damages from watching their pet St. Bernard dogs die in snares set by a trapper, the state’s Supreme Court ruled, because state law doesn’t allow emotional damages over the loss of property.
The Cardenas family sued Sigiel J. Swanson after their dogs Brooklyn, Barkley, and Jax died in snares Swanson set on property near their home in the foothills of Casper Mountain. The Cardenas allowed their dogs to run loose on private and state land near their home.
On the afternoon of Nov. 29, 2014, Brooklyn didn’t return. On Dec. 2, while their parents were at work, the Cardenas children Savannah and Braylon took Barkley and Jax out to look for Brooklyn. Barkley ran off and the children found him in a snare with an apparent broken neck. Braylon injured his hands trying to free Barkley from the snare and Savannah called her mother, saying “he’s dead,” leading her mother to think she meant her brother. Meanwhile Jax was killed in another snare and they found Brooklyn dead later in another snare.
The family sued Swanson for emotional distress and other claims and he moved to dismiss. The district court certified the emotional-distress claim for appeal and the Wyoming Supreme Court, in a July 5 decision, dismissed that claim as well.
“While we do not doubt the genuineness of the family’s grief, authenticity is not the determinative factor giving rise to a cause of action for emotional harm,” the court ruled.
Wyoming has allowed emotional-damages claims for people who witness someone else being hurt, including the driver of a car who hit and killed a snowmobiler who ignored a stop sign and drove into traffic. The state Supreme Court has also allowed emotional damages for breach of contract “for services that carry with them deeply emotional responses in the event of a breach.”
But this was more like the case of a family that sued their plumber after their house flooded, destroying precious personal possessions, the court said. Those plaintiffs couldn’t sue for emotional damages over the loss of property, the court said, and “under Wyoming law, dogs are property.”
It also doesn’t matter that the children were injured by the snares themselves, the court said, even though in Wyoming and many other states physical injury is a prerequisite for emotional damages.
“While Savannah and Braylon might be entitled to emotional damages for their own injuries, the impact rule does not extend their recovery to emotional damages caused by the death of the dogs,” the court ruled.
Finally, the court refused the invitation to establish a new right to emotional damages for the death of a pet.
“This is an argument best made to the legislature, and we decline to expand the reach of emotional damages to property inanimate or animate,” the court ruled.