See subject. An academic question for me, thank God. Just heard an awful story from a neighbor. (It happened years and years ago.)
Depends why. Running livestock will get a dog shot in many rural areas and the owner of the dog has no recourse. Other situations may have different ways of being dealt with.
Also depends on the state. It may be considered “Cruelty to Animals” if it is done with no reason.
The bad news is that dogs are still considered “property.” The good news is that you could seek civil or criminal damages for the destruction of your property. A good lawyer could probably also wring out some “emotional distress” penalties or some thing like that.
In general, this is all over the map. While many jurisdictions limit damages to the “cost of the dog,” there have been cases of jail time. There’s such wide variation, it’s hard to generalize.
As a dog person, I’m sure no recourse – legal or otherwise – would be sufficient if this happened to one of my family members.
Like by burning it?
"The bad news is that dogs are still considered “property.” So the stuff you buy or someone gives to you isn’t property?
“As a dog person, I’m sure no recourse – legal or otherwise – would be sufficient if this happened to one of my family members” Sure, but we’re talking about a dog, not a family member - unless you acquired your family by paying $20 to someone and getting a coupon to have that family member ‘fixed’ free oif charge so they couldn’t breed.
There has been a recent move to attach emotional damages to the loss of a pet. As a “dog person” or cat person or iguana person, if you lose a pet, don’t you replace it with another animal that you love as much as the one that died? Do you do that with your brother?
As noted above, it depends on the circumstance of how, why and where the dog was killed. In Texas, a man was recently shot to death while driving away in the shooter’s car. That was deemed justifiable. Perhaps not surprisingly, killing a dog running away with your baseball would probably not be deemed justifiable.
A dog is not an inanimate object, and should not be treated as such.
You are being willfully malicious, and it is not appreciated.
By that logic, a widow remarrying attributes the same level of emotional attachment to her deceased husband as she does to her cat. Unless one is willing to grant that there is a continuum of emotional distress rather than a black-or-white dichotomy.
I had have to check this, but I think that it would be an intentional tort, probably trespass to chattels or maybe conversion. In either case, the court may award punitive damages in addition to compensatory damages in such cases - unless I’m forgetting something. These are pretty uncommon actions though.
In my state animal cruelty and inhumane treatment of animals are misdemeanors and can carry up to one year in jail. Some people don’t think this is enough and should carry a felony charge.
The criminal law is often inadequate. But the nice thing about punitive damages is that they are assessed not relative to the damage done, but to the egregiousness of the offense and more importantly, the defendant’s ability to pay.
A suspended sentence won’t even embarrass some people but a hefty fine will feel like a place kicker going for the extra point with the family jewels.
What, he shot Old Drum? You should be able to do very well, if you can get George Graham Vest to represent you. For Wikipedia’s account of what is probably the most famous speech ever delivered in an American courtroom, see George Graham Vest - Wikipedia.
Just another one of my “interesting facts that are not directly related to the OP but are interesting” - solosam’s thing about dogs being property is correct in the UK as well - but intriguingly cats are some kind of half-property. So if you run over a dog with your car, you have to find the owner or if you cannot then report it to the police, but if you run a cat over then no big deal.
And phesants and other birds you shoot belong to whoever’s land they are on at the time. Roald Dahl wrote a kid’s book about that.
I do not understand the reasoning behind the cat thing.
English, please? 
Honestly, both are pretty obscure,but nonetheless solid causes of action should you need them.
From what I skimmed, both involve interfering with the peaceful use and enjoyment of an item of property, so obviously if that property is destroyed, that would considered interference.
You’ll need to check on the details for yourself but I think that the tort of conversion is the more serious of the 2. However I noticed that trespass to chattels is a ‘per se’ tort. IIRC, that means that you only have to show that it occurred and not that you suffered any actual damage.
For example it is slander per se to accuse someone of a venereal disease (i think). The logic being that it is such a scandalous and inflammatory statement, that the court will presume that you were injured in a manner that requires compensation.
Sorry but I didn’t read far enough to see how it applies to this tort.
>>legal recourse<<
If someone killed my dog on purpose for no good reason (which is a big qualifier since accidents obviously do happen and I’m very open to give the benefit of the doubt) - legal or not legal recourse wouldn’t even enter into the equation.
Not that I’m recommending that course of action (bro, don’t ban me!) but thats just my honest answer.
In Virginia, anyone “who tortures, willfully inflicts inhumane injury or pain not connected with bona fide scientific or medical experimentation, or cruelly and unnecessarily beats, maims, mutilates or kills any animal whether belonging to himself or another; or does the same to a dog or cat, a companion animal and as a direct result causes the death or euthanasia of that animal is a Class 6 Felony with a fine up to $2500.”
In addition to being evidence of some sort of emotional problem, the above post is filled with outright error and inaccuracy. In fact, every item you bring up is either a misunderstanding or some weird personal spin you’re putting on it.
For starters, not all dogs are bought or gifts. Many are – and here’s the legal term – adopted. That’s right, a “family” term. You don’t adopt a couch. Furthermore, the well-regarded National Canine Research Council distinguishes between a “family dog,” who is a member of the family and has the opportunity to interact with and learn from that family, and a “resident dog,” who is merely kept on the property, such as for guarding. [.pdf"]PDF link](http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/tinymce/Family_v_Resident[1).
The “move” to attach emotional damages to the loss of a nonhuman family member is by no means “recent,” as the George Graham Vest link provided above might demonstrate – that court case was heard in 1870.
Your comment about replacement is also wrong. Many, many stories abound of parents having another child to replace one who died. Until the development of antibiotics, the normal course of most of human history was to replace children. We’re talking billions of cases over tens of thousands of years across all cultures.
Lastly, while I’m not familiar with the case of the man shot in the driveway in Texas, even if it’s a travesty of justice, why should that mean a dog (or a dog’s human family) should be denied justice? Why do you seem to be bothered by – even threatened by – the idea that someone else has legal value?
(Of course there’s a million varieties depending on city, county, state, or country)
Dogs are property. You can buy or sell them. The fact that they can be given freely doesn’t change that (the same can be said about cars, books, or condoms).
You can adopt a highway
You replace a dog by buying another dog, you don’t do that with a kid.
Animals don’t deserve justice, they don’t have that right.
Animals don’t have humans families. Dogs have families that own them.
Reminds me of a story from back in Texas. When I was seven, we moved into the house where I finished growing up. In the first few months we were there, our cocker spaniel disappeared. I did not find out until well into adulthood that neighborhood kids had hanged it. My father never told me until he mentioned it one time a few years before he died. I’d always just thougt it ran away. My father didn’t appear to have done anything about it that I could determine. Don’t know why not. But it pretty much exemplifies the people I grew up among and what I consider typical of Texas.