But you’re being assaulted! You’re being threatened everytime you pass by on *public * property. As several folks have already mentioned, these things are not fail safe. You have nothing less than a life threatening situation here.
I hope that an attorney will come along and list your legal options, but in the meantimeyou might start talking to others in the neighborhood and get their take on it.
Giles, here in Ohio we have strict liability in re to dogs. Trespassing can’t be used as a defense against children, period, and most of the times it can’t even be used against an adult. It doesn’t matter if you have an electric fence or a twenty foot high electrified fence. If your dog harms a child for any reason you will be held liable for that person’s injuries. However, I believe you are correct that having an aggressive dog in an unsecured area easily accessible to children may be seen as recklessly dangerous. I’m sure a jury would frown on that and compensate the victim accordingly.
Obviously, IMO, if you have a dog that attacks people, it shouldn’t be left outside for any reason no matter what type of containment you choose.
Not sure a dog is legally capable of “assault” but here in Ohio you can’t do anything pre-emptively about a dog. One bite and you’ve got a case. I have two HUGE german shepherds living next door to me. They seemed very, very aggressive and I was very concerned that they would scale the four foot fence (which they could easily do) and attack my children. The police told me that there was nothing I could do about it UNTIL they bit someone, even if they acted aggressive and ferocious. He even hinted that it didn’t have to be a particularly bad bite, but that it did have to actually harm a person in order for them to do anything.
Well, one day my neighbor and I were having a bit of lunch in the kitchen when one of the kids ran in and screamed that B has climbed the fence and was in the yard with the “big dogs.” We streaked outside like bats out of hell to see B toddling across the neighbor’s yard. We breathed a sigh of relief because no dogs were in sight, and we assumed they were in the house. Suddenly we saw two furred things fly across the yard towards her. We were frozen with fear. The dogs got into B’s face and barked and snarled and followed her as she screamed and ran towards the fence. Her mother reached over and scooped her up to safety. Meanwhile the owner came outside because my older daughter had ran next door when she saw B in the yard, and SHE was pale with fright.
Those dogs never touched that child. I was amazed and SHE was amazed that they didn’t harm her. And while I was very grateful that things turned out the way they did, I always wondered how people could be so stupid that they’d own animals that they didn’t trust. If I thought my dog would attack a child who innocently toodled into my yard and I lived in a neighborhood teeming with little kids, I wouldn’t let my dog outside. I wouldn’t need the police or the courts to tell me to not act like an idiot.
I would find some legal way to hang out in front of the guy’s house, say, with a picket sign reading “FLAG THE INVISIBLE FENCE”. Wear earplugs. Eventually somebody will notice. Kind of rough on the dogs, but they’ve been really badly trained.
I’ve got to believe that you have some kind of legal recourse here. We need a lawyer in this thread. Minty, Dewey, Bricker, Sua where are ya’?
Thats stupid IMO. If you have erected a 20-foot electrified fence, you have taken much more than simply reasonable measures to prevent your dog from attacking people.
What next? Should people keep their dogs in hardened underground bunkers?
That’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter what you do to prevent an attack; it matters whether or not anybody gets attacked. You could encase your dog in carbonite and, if it fell on a little kid, it’d be your fault. They might not penalize the dog, but it’d still be your fault. In the majority of cases, dog owners are able to deflect the blame onto the dog, and they do so, at the dog’s expense. This may be a problem with our legal system.
Speaking as a victim of several dog attacks, by the way. I don’t blame the dogs.
I still don’t get it. Suppose somebody deliberately disables the 20-foot fence’s electrical system and then jumps over it. Is it still the owner’s fault if the dog eats the tresspasser?
No, but dog owners should all realize that no matter what the situation, when it comes to dogs vs. humans, the dogs SHOULD and WILL lose. Sorry, but no dog’s living situation is more important than the physical safety of a child. That’s reality.
Remember the guy whose child got attacked by a dog in California a few years back and the dad went after it with a baseball bat and beat it to death 20 minutes later? He won. No jury of 12 will convict when it comes down to dog vs. human. They won’t.
I love dogs, but if my dog seriously harms someone, I will be the first to shoot it.
-Tcat
I wanted to add: Then it is no use having a dog for security reasons. Thieves will routinely jump over fences, manage to get bitten by a dog and then the dog owner will have to pay compensation.
Pretty much. You’re “harboring a vicious animal” or something similar - the dog’s not supposed to maul someone for just being there, and the case could be made that the dog could have tried to kill a cop who’s there to bust the owner, the owner’s wife/mom/whoever who had a key and startled the dog, etc. I know of at least one case in Chicago where a kid climbed a fence to retrieve a ball and was mauled by the yard owner’s dog, and the owner was considered at fault. Basically, you shouldn’t own an animal whose response to a “strange” human is to maul the person. Barking, snarling, threatening postures, chasing, that’s all fine.
And I was trying to post an addendum mentioning your point, but the hamsters blocked me. Once a criminal act is underway, THEN it is a different story, of course. Which is possibly what you were trying to say from the start.
-Tcat
If thieves are thinking things through rationally enough, far enough in advance to plan to let themselves get bit by the dog because they know they can beat the dog in court, they’re probably going to look into some other form of work.
The whole idea of the barking dog behind the fence as thief deterrent is that the thieves usually don’t plan that far, or that well, in advance. They also really hate surprises and will tend to run off when a dog starts to bark, even if it’s several houses away.
Owning a pet that will hurt human beings given the opportunity is not a right here. Dogs have been getting a huge amount of bad press because so many people have them, so many people love them, and they all feel heartbroken when an otherwise perfectly fine dog cripples or kills a human being.
If there were a rash of break-ins in which housecats were savaging intruders, we’d be hearing stories about how they should be destroyed, too (yes, I remember the story about the tiger. Shut up. That was a tiger. I’m talking calicos, here.). Or if people were getting bitten by rattlesnakes and dying. Say, that’s a good one: Suppose somebody put up a concrete wall, 4’ tall, around his property, and raised rattlesnakes in his front yard. A kid climbs into the yard to get his ball back, gets bitten and dies. Whose fault is it? The numbnuts who thought raising carnivores in his yard was a good idea, that’s who.
It’s waterproof. The control box has an audible alert when the battery gets low.
I’m sure those are good safety features, but that hardly makes them fail safe.
A freind of mine who owns a medium sized dog came home and found the dog wimpering and wedged between the furnace and adjoining wall. He attempted to extricate the dog and was promptly shocked. He realized immediately what was happening and turned off the electric fence. Apparently the unit went haywire and began shocking the dog while the owner was at work, and had been shocking the dog all day (or certainly a part of it). The dog wedged himself beside the furnace in attempt to flee the source of the pain.
The owner contacted invisible fence and received a reponse that he found absolutely unsatisfactory. A lawyer he consulted advised him that there was little, if anything at all, to be gained by suing.
He god rid of the invisible fence, He did some research and found that this ‘problem’ was not unheard of, and that other dogs had suffered because of mishaps. He hates invisible fence now, and would never own another. I would certainly do a lot of research before buying one, and I don’t think I would take the risk for my pet.
You’re in America, right? Can’t you just whip out the old concealed & carried and shoot the fuckers?
A better solution would seem to be: Don’t have a dog that attacks people.
I’m sorry, but if parents let an unsupervised child climb a fence into a yard that they know has guard dogs, I don’t think the dog owner is the irresponsible one. Children should be taught not to break the law. If they’re too young to learn not to break the law (i.e., trespass), then they shouldn’t be left unsupervised.
Also, I want to see a reputable cite on the Ohio law. Here is what the state statute on dog bite liability is:
Yes, because escalation always works so well in resolving issues…