Articles Posted in Animal/Dog Bites

In the typical employee-employer relationship there is a certain aspect of trust. For the employer, they must trust that the employee is doing their job properly, and the employee must trust the employer will ensure a safe environment to perform their job. This case deals with a situation involving the trust of a safe workplace, and answers the question if an injury can be considered “on the job” if symptoms do not materialize for days following the accident.

On April 8, 2013, Deborah Gaines was going through her typical work routine for Home Care and was tending to a client. While tending to the client, Ms. Gaines was bitten on her right leg by the client’s dog. As a result of the bite, Ms. Gaines immediately felt an injury in her right leg, and a few days later she began to feel pain in her back. The day after the incident, Ms. Gaines filed a report with her employer, Home Care, to receive indemnity benefits and medical expenses from the accident. Home Care then responded to Ms. Gaines saying she did not sustain an “accident” according to the Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Act.

In response, Ms. Gaines filed a suit against her employer in March 2015, and the trial court decided that Ms. Gaines had suffered a work-related injury and awarded her disability benefits, past medical expenses, and reasonable future medical expenses related to her injury. Home Care appealed this decision, arguing that Ms. Gaines’ back pain was not a work-related injury and that Ms. Gaines did not suffer from a temporary total disability.

Litigation between family members can be uncomfortable for everyone involved. But what happens when a plaintiff sues a relative, then passes away, and the relative then becomes the plaintiff? Louisiana’s Second Circuit Court of Appeal recently addressed this unusual situation in a case involving a vicious dog attack.

In May of 2011, Evelyn Goers, 89, was visiting her daughter Laureen Mayfield in Simsville, Louisiana. Goers was attacked and injured by four of Mayfield’s large Tibetan Mastiffs. In May 2012, Goers filed a lawsuit for damages against Mayfield and her homeowner’s insurance company, State Farm. Goers passed away in February 2015, after which Goers’s other daughter, Cheryl Goers, filed a petition to substitute herself as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Mayfield. The next month, Mayfield made a motion to substitute herself as a plaintiff. The trial court granted both motions. State Farm then filed an exception based on the theory that there was no right of action because Mayfield was both plaintiff and a defendant, thus extinguishing the obligation by confusion. La. C.C. art. 1903. Cheryl Goers filed a response requesting that State Farm’s exception be sustained without a hearing but did not include a proposed judgment to that effect. State Farm then submitted a proposed order granting the exception. Cheryl Goers raised no objection to this action by State Farm. The trial court signed State Farm’s order, dismissing Goers from the lawsuit entirely as both defendant and plaintiff. Cheryl Goers then filed an appeal arguing that the trial court’s order was improper because it extinguished her right of action against Mayfield; an exception for no right of action, she argued, can dismiss a plaintiff, but not a defendant from an action.

Under Louisiana law, an appeal cannot be made by a party who voluntarily and unconditionally accepted without protest a judgment rendered against that party. La. C.C.P. art. 2085. State Farm conceded that under the Direct Action Statute, Cheryl Goers could still maintain a claim against State Farm. La. Rev. Stat. 22:1269 (2012), The Direct Action Statute requires that insurance policies issued in the state provide that the heirs or survivors of any claimant under the policy can maintain the claim. However, as for Cheryl Goers’s action against her sister, the Court of Appeal noted that she voluntarily and unconditionally accepted the trial court’s order without protest because she agreed with the exception and did not oppose the order when the trial court approved it. Therefore, reasoning that Cheryl Goers lacked a basis for the appeal, the Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment.

Over the last few years, we have all seen the videos of police arrest that seem to involve excessive methods. These videos stoke controversy and encourage a discussion on what constitutes “excessive force” during an arrest. Even with video evidence, the actions of the police and the arrestee are subject to multiple interpretations. The search for the truth becomes even harder when the arrest is not videoed and the participants all give different testimony on those events. The following case out of Shreveport Louisiana demonstrates how the Civil court system handles differing testimony on allegations of excessive force during an arrest.

In July of 2012, Bobby Byrd filed a lawsuit as a result of what he alleged was the use of excessive force during an arrest against Roy Shore of the Bossier Police Department and W.W. Lindsey and Robert Gordon of the Shreveport Police Department. Mr. Byrd’s excessive force claims revolve around a police chase of Mr. Byrd.  It all started when Detective Gordon, believing that the vehicle that Mr. Byrd drove at the time matched a vehicle tied to a string of burglaries, attempted to pull over Mr. Byrd.  Instead of stopping, Mr. Byrd drove away from the police officer, crossing from Shreveport to Bossier.  Eventually, Mr. Byrd abandoned his vehicle at the Red River and proceeded on foot into the Red River.  The police, with a police canine in hand, continued after Mr. Byrd.  During this pursuit, the riverbank caved in, causing the police canine to fall into the river.  The officer holding the canine, Officer Yarborough of the Shreveport Police Department, released the canine’s leash.  The police canine, instead of listening to the Officer Yarborough’s order to return to the riverbank, pursued Mr. Byrd and bit him.  Mr. Byrd fought back, disorienting the police canine and causing the canine to retreat back to the riverbank.  The officers eventually retrieved Mr. Byrd from the river.

It is at this point that the stories of Mr. Byrd and the police officers diverge.  Mr. Byrd claims that after returning to the riverbank he fully complied with the officers’ requests and that after the police officers handcuffed him they proceeded to strike him.  In contrast, the police officers claim that Mr. Byrd did not comply with their instructions and that Mr. Byrd reached towards his waistband which was submerged underwater.  The officers, believing that Mr. Byrd could have a weapon in his waistband, deployed “distraction strikes” in order to subdue Mr. Byrd. Regardless of the stories, Mr. Byrd suffered multiple injuries: “a dog bite wound, wounds to the forearms, a broken nose, a broken orbital floor requiring surgical reconstruction with a titanium plate, kidney trauma, and abrasions to his ribs” because of this incident.