My neighbor lets his cats roam around the neighborhood killing birds - that I love - with immunity. Ask me if I like it!
Well, sue him. In Seattle. You could retire.
Well, sue him. In Seattle. You could retire.
Per the article:
Roemer said, one day in February 2004 she heard screeching coming from her back yard and saw a neighbor's dog, a chow, holding Yofi in its jaws and shaking the cat. Roemer said she tried to rescue Yofi but lost sight of the cat while trying to save another one of her cats and get the dog out of the yard. She found the cat dead in another neighbor's yard the next day. Roemer said Gray's dog had repeatedly escaped from its yard before the incident, partly because a fence on the side of the yard had large gaps.
The dog was in the cat owner's yard. This award may be excessive when viewed strictly as compensation for the loss of the cat, but it's quite appropriate as punishment for someone who keeps a large dog in a yard with gaps in the fence large enough for the dog to repeatedly escape. The dog owner should be glad it was only a cat that his dog got hold of. He'd be paying a heck of a lot more if it had gotten hold of a human toddler -- which it could just as easily have done.
Judgements like this should be a regular thing. People would soon start getting the message that you either have to have a solid fence, or you can't have a big dog. And fewer toddlers would get mauled or killed.
What would be even better is major fines and a week or two in jail just for owning a dog that gets loose when you obviously don't have a fence capable of containing it. Sticking a large aggressive dog in a yard with a fence that's got holes bigger than the dog in it, is a lot like driving drunk -- playing roulette with other people's lives.