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17 thoughts on “Lawsuit Filed After Los Angeles Animal Services Failed to Disclose a Dog's Bite History and the Dog Viciously Attacked

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  1. Thank you, Colleen, for your valuable exposition of this ubiquitous public health crisis that is forced onto the public by all layers of government.

  2. I hope they win. I think they should have asked for more. I would have tried to get a million or 2 for the son who has to live with the guilt of buying the dog that crippled his mother.

    Sadly since the judge and the shelter both work for the local government I suspect the judge won’t “bite the hand that feeds him” (unlike O.Gee) and will throw the case out. When it comes right down to it. the law is whatever the judge says it is.

    I think it says a lot about what is wrong with our culture that they named this pit after an Ice T song. For some reason our culture exalts violent psychopaths who hurt other people. Ever notice how many pit owners are fans of gangster rap?

    O. Gee lived up to his name. Gangsters kill people. Not just to survive or in self defense. Many killings don’t seem to have a clear cut motive. Some perceived lack of loyalty or disrespect and they will turn on their best friends, family and other gang members. Remind you of a particular type of dog favored by gangsters and their fans?

    • A judge is NOT at liberty to make law however he or she sees fit. A judge must follow the law, and it seems to me that this lawsuit is unwinnable for LAAS. Great job by Ken Phillips. I predict a settlement.

  3. How this shelter is not being charged with a criminal offence such as “public endangerment” or something to do with the foreknowledge of a criminal offence (that of knowing the dog would likely maim or kill someone) is beyond me.

    I don’t “get it”. A few people die from poisoned Tylenol and now we all gotta struggle with child-proof caps. Pitbulls kill and maim hundreds of times per year and we can’t even get effective, enforced muzzle laws? Or laws that demand the dangerous ones be euthanized?

    Colour me, confused.

        • Agreed. Perhaps the loss of their city job and pension would convince those . . .. aiders and abettors, shall we say, that they do have a duty to protect the public. Everyone involved should be sued INDIVIDUALLY as well as the city, since that only punishes the taxpayers. I mean, they fire cops who abuse their authority and break the rules, shelter workers should be treated the same way.

  4. I read this and I see a win, win, win of a case. It is worth noting that this pit has a propensity for attacking both arms of his victims and only going for the arms. That pit photographs well and I am sure the adoption photo was what pulled Brent in. The severely clipped ears give you an idea about what kind of person owned this pit prior to his first rampage. Those clipped ears were likely part of the heartstrings adoption profile. They likely speculated that he was abused and that he has been nothing but a sweet little tank.

  5. When it comes to filing eye-popping lawsuits, Kenneth Phillips doesn’t mess around. I hope he wins big, and that this case becomes a template that other personal injury attorneys use.

    It’s time for No-Kill to be sued into the ground.

  6. Anyone else think they were planning on “adopting” that mutant out all along?

    I am sure they will claim a “communication breakdown” and or “mistakes were made”. You wouldn’t bother naming a dog that you knew you were going to put down. It would and should have been known as “Case number XXX” or “Death Row Inmate Number XXXX”. It seems obvious they were wishing away the attack on the jogger.

    They treat dog attacks as a totally random and rare events. As if you can average out the number of dog attacks across all the dogs in the county evenly. A Chihuahua or wiener dog are just as likely to remove your arm as pit in their minds. Following that belief system the odds that any one dog would attack twice are astronomical.

    Back in reality a pit starts out much more likely to attack and maim or kill a person than almost any other type of dog. A pit that has attacked someone is practically guaranteed to do it again. The fact that no kill has gotten to the point they won’t put down known maulers proves they have chosen dogs over people. No Kill may have started out as a nice idea but it has turned in to a horrible misanthropic death cult that must be stopped.

    I hope this case helps do that.
    I just have seen this death cult get by with so much, I can’t excited anymore. Anyone is allowed to appeal a case to the US Supreme Court. No one can force the SC to take their case however.

  7. Colleen, once again, thank you for your thorough and insightful reporting. Keep sending these stories to news outlets. So far, Inside Edition is one of the few national outlets that will (occasionally) cover these horrific dog attacks. WRAL-TV did a lot of follow-up on the death of a seven-year-old girl and her seriously injured mother. This was in part because the mom worked at the station and the people knew her little girl. Even before that, the station stopped featuring dangerous dogs for “adoption.”

  8. Teresa,
    You are correct about WRAL, it was the first time I saw an American media outlet interview a physician involved in the studies regarding dog attacks.I wrote one of the reporters that they would be inundated with Pit Bull advocates, he wrote back “let em come”

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