Iowa Edict - Commentary on Injury & Accident Law

Question: Can I be sued for a dog bite? The dog lives in a dog house and he is tied. The property is fenced. A neighbor decided to open the main fence door in the middle of the night to feed the dog and he was bitten. The dog has never bitten anyone before.

Charlie Chaplin - A Dog's Life

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My office mate and I recently litigated and successfully settled a cow-in-the-road case in southern Iowa.  The facts are as simple as a black cow weighing 1,000 pounds out on a county road after dark where there are no lights doesn't show up in your headlights until it's too late to stop. In that case the driver's wife died. The driver was a family doctor and we thought that would help him in the community with farmers who admired his dedication to Iowa families. Think again. No one in the community came forward to admit ownership of the cow.

We thought proving ownership of the cow would be as easy as someone being honest and coming forward to admit ownership. But that's not how it's working in rural Iowa. Honesty about ownership is one concept you are not likely to find.

These are tough cases to prove as to who owned the cow. Ownership is extremely important and that means the lawyers need to be involved as quickly as possible.

Did law enforcement help? The Sheriff's are elected officials who look only so far probably not wanting to anger any of the locals. Not proving ownership in some ways gets them re elected. Law enforcement's paperwork on past instances where cows got out is in most instances, Sorry Charlie it's not available. The Sheriff's offices are little or no help. 

Local knowledge washes away with the filing of a lawsuit. If there is no lawsuit every farmer will know who’s cows regularly get out onto the highway and who has lousy fences. File suit and it’s like you are on another planet. Everyone has amnesia. The locals go mute because they are for the most part deaf, dumb and half blind.

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Today’s blog is all about the veterinary science business and training dog owners to be pet philanthropist while the vet business does surgery on the owner's wallet. This comes about from visiting a friend this past Friday and was told the dog they’ve owned for just a few months was in Ames, Iowa having hip surgery performed; all to the tune of $3 grand. You did what?, I exclaimed. I was flabbergasted; and so upon arriving home, I asked Barbara how much she spent on Oreo’s double leg surgery and she said the vets charged $2,500 per leg. Okay now I'm really airborne. Sorry but I can’t help but see why the Chinese are kicking our butts from an economic standpoint. Instead of lowering debt by $3000 to $5000 we are making ourselves feel better by allowing veterinary science to hoodwink us into feeling bad about putting a dog to sleep so they an rake in $6 grand. Don't think for a minute that I don't know why they send home those ‘dog of the week’ photos? Come on, pure and simple this is marketing to emotions; it’s an economic emotional Ponzi scheme.  I don't ever want to hear a vet talk about tort reform and the McDonald's verdict after charging $3 grand for dog surgery. Are you serious?

Oh, I know the animal rights people are going to sick their Rottweiler’s and Pit-bull’s on me. All sorts of people will write me hate-mail and accuse me of being insensitive and a dog hater. But that’s just not true; ask Oreo and Molly our pet dogs looking rather sad eyed at me right now as I write this piece. But give it a rest, these animal-right's folks are some of the same people that yell and scream for tort reform and who tell us that an intelligent, healthy, obedient 11-year-old girls are worth nothing to the parents and then turn around and write a script for dog physical therapy and charge $3 grand to repair a dog's hip.

Every wonder how the law values your pet?

• Vermont Supreme Court Declines to Allow Non-Economic Recovery for Loss of Pets – by Meow-Meow
• Non-Economic Damages In Pet Lawsuits – by Rot. T. Weiller
• Dogs In The Eye of the Law, by Hillary Colley, Esq.

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Anyone that thinks lawyers, judges and court personnel are sitting around twiddling their thumbs should come on down to the courthouse in Polk County to see what goes on. As a lawyer doing mostly PI I'm used to being put on the back burner when it comes to court priorities, so some days we never get to the courthouse. But this week isn't a slow week for PI news. This week has some strange fact patterns that will certainly lead to legal work for some lawyers and judges in some unknown parts of the State of Iowa. As I wrote today's blog I ran across one story that got me thinking about what is going on at the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics. I then got to thinking about how hard the judges work which led me to ask the question in the title. Today's PI stories each provides a different fact pattern from the PI world to wrestle with. Here ... take a walk with me and see if you think this stuff isn't strange and as you ponder each legal situation the answer should become obvious.

In Hopkinton (Delaware County) we have a 3-year-old getting mauled and killed by a set of Rottweiler’s.

In Ankeny we have four dogs dead and two people injured from dog attacks. The City of Hopkinton may now consider banning Rottweiler’s. It almost seems ironic that today is the day to register your “Beautiful Bulldog” at Drake University. See also 1 dog shot, 2 euthanized after fight.

In Bloomfield a 17-year-old teen slips on pond ice, falls in and drowns. See Bloomfield teenager drowns at pond. Then four people plunged into the Mississippi River at New Albin when the thin ice broke and in they went. According to the report no one was seriously injured. One was driving an ATV pulling a trailer with 3 people when it fell through the ice. All were able to get out of the water, build a fire on an island and avoid hypothermia.

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There was a horse stampede at a parade in Jackson County over the 4^th of July. The stampeding horse injured many people who were present just to watch the parade and enjoy the holiday. On August 11, 2010 the first of what will be several lawsuits was filed at the Jackson County Courthouse. The online story is bringing a barrage of comments under the KCCI news story. Today I wonder aloud if those making comments are for unstated reasons, being disingenuous. Could the purpose of those comments be to poison the jury pool; or, have cruel, insensitive, rude and otherwise uneducated comments on the Internet become the standard for unhappy people who can type on a computer?

The comment section under the KCCI story is interesting, but not because there is any substance to the discussion or anything of value being discussed. There is not much about the issues and too much about what is unimportant. Why I find them of interest is because those commenting lack a basic understanding of our American system of civil justice, or how justice and business intersect with the insurance industry and how recovery of costs associated with insurance subrogation maintain a lower insurance premium that I'm sure most of those commenting pay. People you need to get either an education or a life.

Moverman [Profile]

Member

Aug. 19, 2010 7:03am CST

Moverman

 

Steven Mack and his dingbat wife or you could say Stacey Mack and her dingbat husband should be taken out and horse whipped. It's people like that which make me sick. Course if dingbat # 2 had a name like Steve instead of Steven he would know what he is doing is wrong.

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