Your not my lawyer, it’s not my problem, you’re in the clear and so forth.
The setting:
South Carolina
The place:
A pal’s home/business
The sitch:
A friend was staying with my pal. Friend has dog. Dog got loose and ran in road and was killed by pick up truck.
This was a month ago or so. At the time the owner of the truck called the shop and spoke to the dog’s owner telling her he’d struck and killed her dog.
Tuesday my pal - not the dog’s owner, mind you - got a hand written letter asking her to compensate him for the damage to his truck. It’s around $750 for repairs.
Thursday she got a summons to summary court in our county about the same issue. I’m assuming it’s small claims court given the amount.
All of the contact has been to my pal and not the dog’s owner. I’m thinking - but don’t know - that the truck owner is assuming the person with whom he spoke at the store - the dog’s owner - is my pal the business owner.
Question for opinions:
Is my friend somehow liable for the damages to the guy’s truck? It seems odd to me that he would have standing to come after her when she was only involved through the friend staying at her place.
Can one be held liable for damage to a vehicle that strikes a dog?
Again, I’m just more curious than anything else. Bemused, even. But I welcome discussion.
Not a lawyer. Not from that state. A loose thought to kick things off: improperly secured livestock that cause problems are the owner’s problem. If the dog had bitten someone, I suspect that would also be the owner’s problem.
You’re a bit unclear about the circumstances. I gather the dog ran out of the store onto a public road where the accident happened. Is there a residence attached to the store where the dog’s owner was staying as a guest with the dog? Or was the owner of the dog visiting the store and looking after the dog in the store? Or was the owner of the store temporarily looking after the dog, without the dog’s owner present?
The dog’s owner was staying with my pal in a house on the business property. It was chained up by broke the chain - circumstances unknown by me - and ran out in the street. My pal was not around at the time.
The way I’m thinking of it is, is a homeowner liable for property damage caused by their guests? I wouldn’t think so normally, unless you were hosting a drunken party or something. I guess you could advance the theory, that once I welcomed the dog owner, I had some responsibility to ensure the dog was restrained. But that seems pretty strained.
I could imagine a lawsuit against the dog owner, much more than the property owner.
And I could imagine a lawsuit against the driver for damage to property (the dog).
Anyone can pretty much sue anyone for anything. Whether they prevail is another matter.
I could see the property owner being liable if they should have known the chain was faulty. Like, imagine the chain was really old and rusty, or fixed to a wobbly post, and the property owner knew that and permitted it to be used anyways.
Not a lawyer, blah blah blah, but relating a similar experience.
I think that if pal & friend can prove that efforts had been taken to secure the dog properly then they may not be liable. I don’t know if dogs are considered livestock, but in may places loose livestock (barring extreme negligence) are seen in the same light as falling trees etc - an accident/act of nature/God.
Many years ago I rented a place along a pretty busy two lane road. I had a horse, and she was kept inside a 3 strand electric fence. One winter night she rolled right next to the fence and took down the bottom two wires. She crawled out and went gallivanting. VERY luckily for all involved, a warmish day had been followed by a frosty cold night, so the roads were slick and what little traffic there was (it was like 5 am) was going very slowly. Long involved story a bit shorter, she got hit by a car, scooped up onto his hood and then off the side. (I watched it - it was awful) Both she and the driver were essentially fine, the car was toast. I had renter’s insurance, and the end of it was that I was not liable because I had had appropriate containment that failed through accident, not negligence. The guy was also a cattle farmer and understood that stuff like this happens (bless him).
My mare was scraped and sore, and had a dislocated fetlock (ankle) that healed up well after 6 weeks of standing tied in her stall, and then many months of slow rehab.
All of this occurred in a rural county in Maine, so YMMV.
If your friend was taking care of the dog without being paid, I think this is what is called a “gratuitous bailment”, where you take charge of someone else’s property but don’t get paid for it. The standard for that is “slight care” - you don’t have to do very much to discharge your responsibility for the property. Securing a dog with a chain seems sufficient to me. The truck owner may have cause of action against the dog owner, but unless the business is a dog kennel or something like that, I doubt anyone is on the hook beside the dog’s owner.