BarkingDogs.net

The material on this page was contributed by Geordie Duckler, LLC - Attorney at Law,
in an interview conducted by the Barking Dogs Webmaster in May of 2006

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Preparing to Sue the Dog Owner in Court: A Five Step Process

Step One: Gather Evidence to Show that You Attempted to Resolve the Problem

If you want to win your barking dog court case, then you have to contact the offending dog owners. When the dog barks and it bugs you, you can't sit back and just say, "Oh poor me, I'm being bothered by a barking dog. You've got to either walk over to the house, knock on their door, or call them up, or meet them somewhere. Or, just lean over the damn fence and say, "Hello, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your dog is bothering me."

I have been in a number of cases in which, getting close to the end of the lawsuit, I realized that the greatest weakness on my party's side is that they didn't do anything to end their victimization themselves. They never made any normal attempts to fix the problem. Juries don't like it and judges don't like it, because they don't want to reward people for just sitting back and being victimized. They want to reward people who have no other options left for themselves.

Now, once you contact the offenders and they say, "Leave me alone, my dogs are fine," you don't have to continue pestering them. It's okay if you just go to their door one time. You don't have to go back two or three or four times. But you do have to go at least once, and you'll be much better off if you can offer some kind of proof afterward that you did, in fact, make at least that one attempt.

Also, you want to be sure to contact animal control. Of course, they will probably just blow you off, because most animal control departments could care less about a barking dog. So barking complaints are always going to go to the bottom of their to do list, because they hate them. But even if you feel certain that animal control will not help you, you still need to be able to show that you made some attempt to work through them.

It would also be a good idea for you to contact your neighborhood association, even if you know that they are not going to help you either, because you can't just go into court and say, "I didn't make any attempts to resolve the problem myself since I knew that it would be futile." Remember, the jury wants to know that you gave it the old college try before you resorted to litigation.

So then, step one is to show that you yourself have made an attempt to resolve the problem through the county and/or through your own conduct.

Go forward to read about step two

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This page from the Duckler Interview is part of Section Three:
the Law section of barkingdogs.net