Dog (Bite) Days Of Summer, Part II: Home Inspector Bitten While Inspecting Home Can’t Sue Realtor

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

Last week, I wrote about an exception to the strict liability normally imposed on dog owners under New Jersey's dog bite statute. (A short time before that, I wrote about yet another exception to strict liability under the dog bite statute, so the exceptions are obviously more interesting than the rule.) This post is about a different dog bite case, Ward v. Ochoa, with a similar result even though it was not decided under the dog bite statute. Ward involved a home inspector who was attacked and severely injured while performing a home inspection. She sued the dog owners (who eventually settled) along with the real estate agency and real estate agent who were selling the house. Like the dog groomer in last week's post, however, the home inspector's claims were dismissed.

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Dog (Bite) Days of Summer, Part I: Owners Usually, But Not Always, Strictly Liable For Dog Bites

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

As dog owners in New Jersey know, or should know, they are usually strictly liable for injuries suffered by anyone bitten by their dogs. New Jersey does not follow a "one free bite rule." Instead, under New Jersey law: "The owner of any dog which shall bite a person while such person is on or in a public place, or lawfully on or in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, shall be liable for such damages as may be suffered by the person bitten, regardless of the former viciousness of such dog or the owner's knowledge of such viciousness."

There are, however, exceptions to this rule. For example, trespassers, who are obviously not "lawfully on or in a private place," cannot sue under the dog bite statute. A different exception was at play in Carpentiero v. Pocknett, where a dog groomer was bitten in the face by a dog while bathing the dog. In that case, defendant brought her dog to Katie's Pet Depot, where plaintiff, an independent contractor, worked as a part-time pet groomer. Plaintiff testified that had she been advised that the dog was old and had arthritis, she would have "muzzled the dog prior to grooming." But she was never told that, therefore she did not muzzle the dog, and, while she was bathing the dog, she was bitten in the face.

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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie . . . Just Not In A Hallway Where They Might Create A Dangerous Condition?

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

When is a sleeping dog a dangerous condition? This is the burning question that the Appellate Division answered in Parella v. Compeau.

In Parella, plaintiff attended Christmas dinner at a friend's house along with approximately 20 other guests. After the second course, she got up from her chair to put her dish in the kitchen sink and check on her child who was in an another room. To do so, she had to walk behind several seated guests. She did not have to ask anyone to move until she got to the last guest in the row. That guest moved her chair in and plaintiff made a move familiar to anyone who has been to a crowded holiday dinner — she "lifted [her] glass and plate, turned her back to the wall and shuffled her feet to pass behind [the] chair." "As she cleared the chair, plaintiff turned right to enter the hall toward the kitchen, and fell."

What caused her fall was a "tan, fairly large dog" that was "lying in the hallway, past the threshold of the dining room." The dog did not belong to defendants, the owners of the house and the hosts of the party, and was one of two dogs in the house for the party. When plaintiff fell, the wine glass she was holding broke, cutting her finger and severing a tendon. Plaintiff sued, alleging that defendants failed to warn of her of a dangerous condition — the dog — in their home. The trial court granted summary judgment to defendants and plaintiff appealed.

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Havanese Day! Statements on duped dog buyer’s blog not defamatory

by: Peter J. Gallagher (@pjsgallagher) (LinkedIn)

In Roberts v. Mintz, defendant bought what he believed was a "healthy, nine-month old, purebred Havanese," but what he got was a two-year old dog that was not a purebred Havanese, and was suffering from various health problems. Defendant complained and plaintiffs offered to refund his money in exchange for the dog. Defendant refused. He wanted the refund, but he wanted to keep the dog because he had already incurred $800 in veterinary fees and because he had become fond of the dog, which he named Moose.

One month after buying Moose, defendant began posting about his experience with plaintiffs on his blog. As you probably guessed, the posts were not positive. Eventually, plaintiffs sued in connection with six specific statements defendant made on his blog, which, among other things, accused plaintiffs of being members of a "notorious ring of South Jersey dog grifters," alleged that plaintiffs had been convicted of animal cruelty, claimed that plaintiffs' lived in a "run down farmhouse with 6 children," and described plaintiffs as "despicable human beings" who ran a "fraudulent puppy mill." Defendants also posted that they had heard from others who were "unwittingly scammed" by plaintiffs. Individuals who claimed to be plaintiffs responded to some of the posts in the comments sections of the blog, calling defendant a "liar" and a "jerk," and claiming that he "suffered from 'rage syndrome,' a behavioral condition that afflicts canines."

In lieu of answering plaintiffs' complaint, defendant moved for summary judgment, seeking to have the complaint dismissed. He also served plaintiffs with a frivolous litigation letter. Plaintiffs cross moved for summary judgment and also sought an injunction preventing defendant from defaming them. The trial court granted defendant's motion. It held that plaintiffs were barred from suing in connection with several of the statements because the one-year statute of limitations had expired. In doing so, it rejected plaintiff's claim that the statute of limitations should have been tolled because defendant had committed a continuous tort. The trial court found that the remaining statements were "opinions, epithets, and hyperbole," and were therefore "not sufficiently factual to be actionable."

Defendant then moved for sanctions, and the trial court granted the motion. Although it did no award defendant all of the sanctions he sought, it did award him $25,000 — assessed against both plaintiffs and their counsel — because plaintiffs filed their complaint without sufficient evidentiary support and because several claims were barred by the statute of limitations.

Both sides then appealed — plaintiffs seeking to reverse the trial court's decision dismissing their complaint, and defendant seeking to reverse the trial court's decision to award him less in sanctions than what he requested

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In Honor Of National Hot Dog Day . . .

For those of you who don't know (like me until a few minutes ago, thank you Twitter), today is national hot dog day. In my efforts to try to be relevant, I thought I would post something about hot dogs and the law. A Westlaw search of "hot dog" in the New Jersey database yields 51 results. Most of these cases are not terribly interesting, but one caught my eye for extolling the virtues of "peddlers" selling hot dogs on the street (known to many as "dirty water dogs").

In Brown v. City of Newark, 113 N.J. 565 (1989), the New Jersey Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether Newark's municipal peddling ordinance was constitutional. A "peddler" was defined by Newark as: "any person commonly referred to either as a peddler or hawker, who goes from place to place or from house to house by traveling on the streets and carries with him goods, wares and merchandise for the purpose of selling or delivering them to consumers . . . ." The Supreme Court noted that peddling was a legitimate occupation, but was subject to reasonable regulation. The ordinance at issue in Brown, among other things, required: (1) that peddlers move unless they were making a sale; (2) required that peddlers avoid creating nuisances; and (3) restricted the size and location of peddlers' carts. A group of peddlers challenged the ordinance. The trial court ruled in their favor. The Appellate Division affirmed (mostly) as did the Supreme Court.

Of particular concern for us on national hot dog day, however, was the court's musing about the sale of hot dogs by peddlers:

The problem is that the municipal regulator is squeezed at both ends of the spectrum. Generally a municipality is forbidden to set aside a portion of its streets as a marketplace where space may be used by peddlers for the sale of merchandise. Even the peddler's license afforded by statutory grace to any veteran . . . does not carry with it a license to sell “refreshments or merchandise at a fixed stand.” The best that a municipality can do is oversee an uneasy alliance between competing peddlers, consumers, and the demands of the public in maintaining fixed zoning boundaries. This is no easy burden, as the “hot dog wars” of Atlantic City attest.

Part of the reason for the regulatory stalemate is the ambivalence that we feel toward street peddlers. Many of us retain images of peddlers-past who enhanced our neighborhoods. Others enjoy the ambiance of a hot dog alfresco or savor chestnuts roasting on an urban street. Those are the pleasant aspects of peddling. The unpleasant part is that we have a sense as a community that we do not want trays of sausages and costume jewelry camped outside of our best retail stores. The problem thus requires maintaining a delicate balance between the nostalgic aspects of peddling and the intrusive aspects.

I, for one, enjoy hot dogs, al fresco and otherwise, but I am not sure I have ever thought of a dirty-water-dog, or the stand from which I purchased it, as creating "ambiance." Regardless, happy national hot dog day.