EP. 52 BARKING MAD: DOGS AND THE LAW
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Colin McCallin. Thank you for listening. Please do us a favor and leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (00:24):
All right, Russ. Ready to check this out. A three legged dog walks into a bar. He looks around and announces. I'm looking for the man who shot my paw. Oh, isn't that terrible? That's horrible. Uh, everybody. Hello? Welcome to is this legal? My name is Colin McCallin and sitting right across from me is my partner in crime. Russell Hebets, say hi, Russ. Hello? Hello. Hello everyone. And, uh, we've just kind of given you a little a hint about what we're going to be talking about today. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and how sometimes randomly a dog three delayed like a dog might walk into one and I would just getting us not our pot or our topic today. Um, there was some interesting news that came out of the white house this week,
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Russ Z a stimulus package, right? Uh,
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Not that one. That was pretty big, but some other, another
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Big story. Confirmation of Merrick Garland.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh yeah. That would normally be noteworthy on a show like this, but that's not what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
All right. Um, you stumped me
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Well, uh, it turns out have you ever heard of a, of a member of the Biden family, major Biden,
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Good old German shepherd major rescue dog. That's right. Mistaken.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Um, for those who may have missed this, uh, newly elected president Biden, uh, had two dogs that, uh, two white house dogs that lived in the white house. They were both German shepherds champ and major. Uh, but this week, I guess, major was involved in some sort of altercation. Shall we call it? Uh, obviously he hasn't been tried. I mean, these are mere allegations. You guys know how the show works. Okay. We're not saying he's guilty of anything, but he's alleged to have nipped at a secret service agent, right?
Speaker 3 (02:12):
I mean, you know, they say that this was a minor incident, but I think this was a major incident.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well done. Well done. We'd love to get, we have to get our symbols back.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Um, so unfortunately for major, uh, he has been expelled from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He got booted back to Delaware to Delaware. That's definitely a good right. And here's the, here's the rub champ, pour shampoo. Didn't bite anybody. He also got kicked out. Well,
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I mean, champ, isn't gonna make major go alone. He's got his back.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
He's his loyal bird pack. Well, of course this got us, this got us thinking about, uh, dogs and the law. And we actually decided to do a, uh, talking about some of the, uh, laws that we have in America related to dogs. And hopefully we're going to have a little fun, uh, in going over this stuff. But, um, Russ, I think you may have looked into some numbers that some of the raw data, some of the PA data, if you will, will,
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Will not, sir.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
What w what are we looking at here? So
Speaker 3 (03:24):
42 States and the district of Columbia currently have statutes that regulate dogs. And we're talking about things that major is accused of violent, aggressive dogs. And the reason for that is four to 5 million Americans are bitten by dogs every year, not sexually a really high number, super high number. That is actually the highest reason why children go to emergency rooms is because of dog bites. However, only 0.00, zero two of the, these attacks are fatal. So lot of dog bites out there, very, very, very few fatalities. So it's normally not that big of deal, you know, bites, heel got so, but that's why we have laws in almost every state. And we're going to get into these because I mean, face it, America loves their dogs. I mean, Colin, do you have a dog? I do have a dog. And do you love your dog?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I love my dog. I have a 10 year old he's, he's going to be 10 in April Russ. Uh, he is a golden doodle, so his mom was a golden retriever. Dad was a standard poodle, uh, and, um, bogey is his name. He's great.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Is that, is that silver anniversary? He's going to get some new silver water bowl for the ten-year anniversary.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Oh yeah. Okay. So for 10 years, yeah, maybe I have to get him something like that. Flashy. I don't think he would like, like a, like a gold-plated
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Water bowl, maybe just a new boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Maybe a new tennis ball. He's all set. Okay. Yeah. How about, what about you dress? Tell me about your dog. Yep.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
I have a three-year-old yellow English lab who is, you know, I had, I had dogs growing up. I had a really cool Airedale growing up named Tigger. That was ton of fun, but blue. That's my dog. He blue, my boy blue, my boy blue. He is my favorite. He is an awesome dog. And so, you know, you and I were right there with the rest of the country being dog.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So, you know, for those of you listening, who don't have dogs, just turn off the podcast right now. We don't want you. We don't need you. If you're a dog hater, just go ahead and take your hate and shove it right down podcast lane. What do you think? Is that a little too? That's a little aggressive. I don't don't don't go anywhere. Don't Hey it, come back, come back.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Just stay, listen, and yell at us. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Exactly. Yeah. You can just think of how much you just think of how much you test dogs. And,
Speaker 3 (05:55):
But, but we're pretty much done with the dog love at this point. Sorry. So let's, you know, generally, um, States have all of these different laws and they have distinctions about what makes a dangerous dog about the penalties and there's similarities. Um, but there's definitely distinction, state to state. Yeah. Generally you're looking at, for dangerous dog, you're looking at a dog who attacks a person or attacks another domestic animal and generally it's unprovoked that's. Right. So those are kind of the, the baseline of generally what we're looking at when we're talking about these dangerous dogs. And most of the time you need to have your dog has to have displayed signs of aggression before. So let's say, you know, you have the sweetest poodle or labber poodle, right? Labber Poot labradoodle. There's probably
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Elaborate it's ladder,
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Right. It's labradoodle. So you have the sweetest labradoodle ever, never showed any signs of aggression. They get aggressive one time. You're basically on notice at that point. So if something happens again, then you're looking at maybe the city or the state taken the dog, maybe, you know, worst case scenario it's euthanization, but there's a bunch of steps in between.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Probably pretty rare. Right? Yeah. But you know, I mean, the, I guess the person who, uh, is liable for this of this, of course, the dog owner, I mean, they're not gonna, they're not gonna slap cuffs, pock cuffs on old major here and down to the County
Speaker 3 (07:31):
And you did get, he got kicked out.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Right. I mean, so, I mean, he's, he's facing some consequences here.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I'm just saying, as officer McGruff, the crime dog, isn't going around arresting other dogs. Okay. Like the owner gets arrested, the Boucher's, you know, they got off scot-free basically of course, Melissa euthanized in that terrible case, you just mentioned, but we won't talk about that. Uh, but Russ is right. I mean, um, most, uh, in fact, uh, uh, we were looking, uh, just, just to look at an example in our state, in Colorado, um, most of the statewide level stuff relating to dogs relates to a dangerous dog, right? If a dog makes an attack, somebody, you know, uh, if, if the dog kills a cat kills, a dog kills a tax or kills a person, there are going to be varying criminal penalties that are, the owner is going to be,
Speaker 3 (08:23):
And for all of those, we're talking about the men, like a cat, uh, domesticated. Right, right. So if you have a dog out there that, you know, takes down a rabbit. Right. That right. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So, yeah. Uh, we're talking about other domesticated animals. So, um, the owner is the one who faces these consequences and Russell alluded to something that's also really, really important. Um, and forcement, and really the, the nature of these laws depend largely on where you live. Um, you know, and you, you may have, you, you know, you may have a state law that talks about certain prohibitions that your dog can or cannot do, but you might have much more restrictive, local level, uh, enforcement provisions, just take, for example, the city and County of Denver contrasted with, uh, you've got maybe two or three pages of statutes at the state level, Russ, the Denver code is like 60 pages long in relation to that.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
It's, it's amazing. And that's, and that's really typical of big cities or bigger cities.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I mean, you, you, you have dense population, you have a lot more dogs per capita. You need to take measures to make sure everybody's safe.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah. And you have more dog bites per capita because of that. Right. You know, you have, you have, um, a dog out on a farm, out on a Prairie somewhere. They're not interacting with people like dogs in the city are, so it does make sense, but it gets, it can get really, I mean, you can get bogged down in these codes, like you said, you know, 60 pages. That's, I mean, that's a ton, like you look at Colorado murder statutes and that's maybe 10 pages.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Well, well, and, and it's all just the nitty-gritty stuff. I mean, the, the, the, the, the statutes don't just deal with like dangerous dog provisions, which are very lengthy in and of themselves. But we're also talking about licensing requirements, um, you know, demonstration of vaccinations, barking dog. Gosh, that was barking dogs. Um, I used to, when I first started as a da, then Douglas County I'll, uh, I dealt with dog cases all the time because there's such a low level stuff. That's what I,
Speaker 5 (10:30):
That's what newbie prosecutors handle. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Super quick story. I was, I was prosecuting an owner of a dangerous dog. Uh, the dog had gotten loose, um, off its leash and attacked a woman, uh, bit her a couple of times. And, um, anyway, uh, the case ended up going to trial and I have to call the woman to the stand as the prosecutor. Uh, so she can explain what happened. And I, uh, this, this is true. I can't believe I said this. And it was not intentional. I promise. But here's how it went down. She's on the stand. I say, Hey, ma'am, are you nervous? Or have you ever testified before? And she said, yeah, I am. I am pretty nervous. And I said, well, don't worry. Ma'am no one in here is gonna bite ya.
Speaker 5 (11:12):
And I mean, posing council looked at me with daggers
Speaker 1 (11:15):
And I didn't even, it didn't really occur to me what I did until after I promise it was not a setup, but anyway, yeah, that's, that was my life for like a year out of law school. You deal with barking dog cases, which, which is not fun. Right? No, those, those are the worst. Yeah. But anyway, the point is, is that all of these things can be regulated, um, at kind of the local level, depending on where you live. If you're in a rural or rural area, there may be very little, uh, requirements that you have to comply with.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Right. Right. And, and so what are some of the things let's talk about? Some of the things that, um, the, the state or local level can do, if you a dangerous dog. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Um, so, you know, russet, it kind of starts off with that, that, that discovery process, right. There has to be kind of, you know, th the, the state in order to take action, it has to be able to kind of prove that the parties are on notice that the dog was dangerous.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
You have to have a determinant of your termination, that there is in fact a dangerous
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Exactly. So, you know, it's not like, um, you know, when, when you take your dog to a vet, they're just going to look at and say, Oh, okay, that's a dangerous dog. You have to, how's it this
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Way. If the Muslims are conditions,
Speaker 1 (12:27):
There's usually some sort of instigating incident incident. And what we're typically talking about is some sort of attack, um, some sort of bite, or, uh, you know, it doesn't really matter how major or minor, um, I guess it does, if the person, if it's a serious injury or death, right. But, you know, most, most of these things are pretty minor. But, but if that, if this happens, I handled a case like this recently, Russ, uh, here's what happened at dog got away from its owner and, and actually killed a cat. It was a sad case. Uh, and so the, you know, basically the animal control division was called out. Uh, they ended up citing, uh, my client with possession of a dangerous dog. And they impounded the dog for 10 days. They, there was a 10 day mandatory in town. They just took the dog and said, okay, the dog's been in an incident and think about that for a second. I mean, you, a dog is in a violent and maybe first-time incident like that. And then they take them away into a shelter. Um, you know, that's not very good.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
That's not going to make him calm. Right, right. That's not going to ease. That's what the Denver code requires. And the Denver has the ability to do that because nothing's been proven yet. Right. This is an allegation.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And, and then they, they also have, they also have say, so the animal control division has a say in terms of how they release the dog back to the owner. So, um, in this particular case, uh, the client had a six foot high backyard fence, completely enclosed. There was no way the dog could have gotten out. And, and remember, in this particular case, uh, the attack happened while the dog was out for a walk. It's not like he escaped from the property. Right. But animal control came out and said, no, six foot, sorry, that's not big enough. You have to build a 10 foot 10 by 10 by 10 cage, uh, to enclose this dog,
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Even though it was already enclosed in a six foot fence with no holes, correct.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
It's you know, so this is, they don't mess around. And that there had to be muscle training. The dog has to be muzzled whenever he's walking around in public. So
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Is that the reason why the city has the ability to take a dog like that? Cause I mean, most, most dog owners, if you love your dog, if your dog lover, you think of that dog is part of your family. Right. And the state, but, but the state doesn't look at it that way the dog is property. Well, it it's, it's legally property. It's not, it doesn't have rights.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Right. Right. And, and, and, and, and maybe another way to further describe how they see the dog, a potential liability. This is someone who, this is a dog that has, has demonstrated at least some ability to, uh, you know, display, dangerous, uh, tendencies. That's no good. So, I mean,
Speaker 3 (15:06):
So this, the six foot enclosure that you're talking about, um, I mean, describe this, I mean, you we've, we've talked about this back at the time when you had this case, wasn't this like a full enclosure, like including the roof. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah. I mean 10 foot and there had to be a roof and the dog, the dog in question, Russ was 35 pounds and,
Speaker 6 (15:28):
You know, animal control, we're going to talk
Speaker 1 (15:30):
About animal control officers in a minute. In fact, maybe this'll be a segue, but you know, these are not police officers. They have a black and light code that says, okay, upon a finding of a, of a dangerous dog, you have to build an enclosure. That's 10 foot hides that, you know, these are the dimensions like this stuff is in the Denver municipal code in terms of how big the cage has to be. And of course there are going to be plenty of situations where none of that's necessary given the particular a dog situation, but that's just how the code's written. That's how it's enforced. It's black and white
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And one size fits
Speaker 1 (16:08):
All. So this person, the guy who, the person who has the six foot high fence had to build a 10 foot, 10 enclosed cage, where he keeps his dog, uh, basically, you know, during the day it's a little overkill in my opinion, but that's, that's what can happen if the dog is involved in an attack. So for anyone out there who's listening. I don't know if the cat deserved, by the way. I did.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I mean, probably, I mean, for anyone out there who's listening, like if your municipality is requiring something like that, consider moving across the street to the next municipality.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's, I mean, let's, let's face it. I think that, I think that some of these laws have that import, right. I mean, I think that there's a certain, there's gotta be a push behind the notion that, okay, well, if you have a dangerous dog, we don't want them in our particular municipality. So we're going to force you out with these statutes.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Well, and that, that's actually a perfect segue to Denver. And what has gone on over the years with the pit bull?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is pretty interesting. I mean, uh, you know, depending on where you live, some of you may have local ordinances involving what they call breed specific legislation, which frankly, rusts, uh, sounds kind of like dog racism to mean,
Speaker 6 (17:26):
Are we singling
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Out pit bulls here? I mean, I don't know. That's what it looks like to me, where's the, where's the, you know, pit bulls
Speaker 6 (17:33):
Parade. Well, um, so
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, Denver, just as an example, in 1989, the Denver city council passed a law banning pit balls pursuant to a number of notorious pit bull attacks. Think what, what pushed it over the edge was a three-year-old kid died. Got mauled. Yeah. And so they crafted a statute that has been on the books for the last 30 years.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
It actually tested in court. It was, it was tested as unconstitutional.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Well, it had, it had its challenges. It, uh, it survived a, a legislative attempt to change it. Uh, mayor Hancock vetoed that vetoed that change anyways, recent, the band was just repealed in this last election in 20. Exactly. So, uh, pit bulls are no longer discriminated against in, uh, the city and County of Denver.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
And, you know, honestly, a lot of that I think really is discrimination. Like because pit bulls can be really sweet docs. It really, I mean, it should be based on the dog. Like there can be really aggressive labs, which I have a account for the highest number of bites in America and labs generally are really sweet dogs, you know, but pit bulls are, they're just tougher and they, they tend to, if they attack, it tends to, I think, have more fatalities. Maybe,
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Let me just say too, like, um, you know, words matter we should, if we could go back in time and rename that dog, anything other than pit ball that might've really helped the cosmic Russ let's think of the most insane, aggressive name we can name for a dog and call them that. And yeah. Anyway, I digress, but anyway, yeah. So we're w there was a big pushback on that particular thing. And, um, anyway, that that is no longer a band here in Denver.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So let's talk about these animal control officers, right? Cause these are the features on catchers, right? They're the guys going around just killing everyone's buzz as you're out at the park, throwing the ball with your dog,
Speaker 1 (19:37):
And you recite assume all of these people are post certified law enforcement officers. That means they went to the Academy, they went through formal training. Um, they can carry a gun, Ross, I assume that's all true.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'm pretty sure that's not true. In fact, I think both Jebidiah and Cornelius at one point were animal control officers and Myrtle to Myrtle was,
Speaker 1 (20:04):
And I'll tell ya, I mean, hats off to those guys because they have a tough job. Um, you know, they, uh, you, you, you you're generally, uh, you know, most people are not glad to see the dog catcher
Speaker 3 (20:16):
You're universally despised.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Exactly. Yeah. Yep, yep. Defense attorneys, bail, bondsmen, dog catcher, or some somewhere around there. Right. Um, but yeah, I mean, these, these are not police officers. I mean, here's, here's kind of a funny story. I mean, I know that they're not police officers Russ. And so let me take you about five years ago. Um, I've got bogey in the park by my house. This is in the city County, December. Yep. And I will confess, uh, I had him off leash. She's a retriever. I throw the ball for him and goes and gets it. And I know that I'm breaking the law and sure enough, an animal control officer walks up to me and, you know, he was a nice guy. Um, but he said, look, you know, your dogs off leash, um, you can't do that. And I'm afraid I have to give you a citation.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
And you know, Russ,
Speaker 1 (21:02):
I'm sitting there, I'm standing there and I'm laughing at myself. Why do you think I'm laughing at myself? Why are you laughing at you? I don't know why,
Speaker 6 (21:13):
Because you're funny.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
I am funny. But in this particular case, I'm laughing at myself because I cooperate with this guy. Yeah. I provide my name. I provide my address. I didn't have my ID at the time. And the reason this is funny to me is I know that I could have dropped a fake name. I could have given a fake address and I could have saved myself $180 because these guys don't have like a computer where they can run my criminal, check on NCAC and see, you know, if I have any warrants or where I live or what my identity is, they don't have any of that. He took my word that I lived at this address and that my name was what it was. And I ended up paying $180 because I'm a good citizen.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Although, although had you lied to them, you would have been committing what could have been charged as a felony.
Speaker 6 (21:57):
We might call that fraud, criminal impersonation or perjury, maybe to influence a public official rates.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
And I mean, and you know, these guys, I mean, you slip them a 20 trying to get out of this next thing, you know, you're doing three to five and 16.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
I mean, these guys don't mess around,
Speaker 1 (22:12):
But I'm laughing at myself because I could, I would have gotten away with it by lying. And here I am just the sucker, giving him my info and taking it. You know,
Speaker 3 (22:22):
They don't mess around, but honestly they really do generally have an elevated sense of self-importance
Speaker 6 (22:29):
Like some of them do, if, if
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Apologies to any dog catchers out there who are fans and it's not universal, but some of them definitely have kind of little man syndrome. And maybe that's a function of the fact that they're always getting just mouth back.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Right. No one is ever happy to talk to the animal control officer. There's usually, there's usually something bad going on. So I have an animal control officer story. I want to hear it. Okay.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah. So this involves a allegation that a dog nipped and bit someone, so animal control comes out and they talk to everyone and they write a citation to the owner of the dog. Now the allegation is this dog nipped someone through a fence, okay. There was a fence. He was on his own property. But the allegation is he nipped this person who was walking by as they walked by. And so this person goes to court response and says, Hey, listen, prosecutor. There's no way my dog could have nipped someone because the slats in my fence are too skinny. He can't fit his mouth through there. And the pro prosecutor looks at me and says, you know, whatever, like, I'm going to believe you, if you don't want to take my plea offer, we can set it for trial. And so the guy's like, okay, well, let's go to trial then I guess. And so it gets set for trial trial comes the prosecutor, subpoenas the animal control officer to come testify about this. And before the trial begins, it's a trial to a judge. The prosecutor sits down with the animal control officer and says, Hey, this clown right here is going to try to say that his dog couldn't have done it because the slats were too narrow on his fence. And we'll control officer looks at him and says, Oh yeah, that that's right. There's no way the dog could have bitten through that.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
But this sometimes is the kind of person you're dealing with with the animal control officer.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Exactly. Well, and oftentimes a lot of these, a lot of these are neighbor disputes, right? I mean, especially with the barking dog stuff, I mean, you know, the statute I read the barking dog statutes. Ridiculous. It is. I mean, today, what is a barking dog? What is a violation of the law? It's like, it really, it's just going to depend on what the complaint and thinks it is. And you know, so often you have these neighbors, you know, the owner of the dog and then their neighbor who doesn't like the dog barking and there's a feud and the animal control officer gets in the middle of it. And they're just like, Oh, someone did
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Please. It's a no-win city. And sometimes it comes down to like, did the dog bark 12 times or 13 times,
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Did the bar dog bark at six o'clock or six Oh one? I mean, anyway, um, so lots of, lots of stuff here. Uh, but anyway, our, our friend major Biden, we wish him well. Uh, we hope that his trip back to Delaware is a good one.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
He's happy in Delaware, or he sometime can rehabilitate. Maybe they can get them in dog school and get them back to just quit going after the secret service, man, they're there to protect you major,
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Major. Come on. I think we can do a little bit better major. Well, um, I guess real quick, Russell, what's what's a lightning round. What's your favorite dog of all time.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Sure. Oh man. I mean, I'm a huge fan of Clifford Clifford, the big red dog. He, the giant dogs, the giant dog that was Marmaduke. No Mo well, mama, Duke's a big dog. That's a great Dane. Clifford is like a, like as big as a house where you can ride. I mean, how cool to ride around town on the back of your giant dog? I would imagine though, he eats a lot. That's a big fat. That would be trouble. You're probably talking about like a cow and a bite.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Yeah. Can you, you haven't taken him to the vet. I mean, where do you go for that?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
I mean, you'd have to find a giant vet. Clearly. I,
Speaker 1 (26:21):
I was always partial to Benji when I was a kid. Have you remember Benji? Um, we, we, we recently watched the Netflix reboot of that or maybe it's Disney. I dunno. It was pretty good.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah. I, uh, one of my just keen memories as a child is watching old yeller how just desperately sad that movie was. And like, I've, I brought it up with my kids and they know that it's a sad ending and they refused
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Okay. At this point, I think if, if I'm mad at my kids, I make them watch because my parents made me watch old yeller when I was like six years old. And I don't know how many years of counseling it took afterwards, but that movie traumatized me. Um, I mean, spoiler alert, right? It was with the movies 50 years old. I was, let's just say things don't work out very well for all of y'all are definitely not a happy ending, a horrible, but, um, you know, it's because we love our dogs so much that these things are hard to watch, right? Same with Marley and me anyway. All right. Well, you know what, it's time for now, Russ
Speaker 2 (27:32):
[inaudible] pedals of the world. We're here to talk about you. Aren't we Russ, we are, it is time for the dumb criminal of the route. And this one in keeping with our dog
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Theme. This case comes out of Illinois from 2016. And this in fact was a civil case. So we're talking about a criminal, but it was a civil case. So here's what happens. Ryan Cole of Illinois was driving his motorcycle while intoxicated, so much fun. So, I mean, I mean, that's a good time. So, so he is committing a crime by drunk driving on a public highway. The problem is as he's driving, he hit the dog, a dog belonging to Ryan. Oh, I'm sorry. Belonging to Erica and Trish, Eric and Trish, Lou sander. Their dog was lying in the middle of the street. Okay. Ryan being drunk was not able to avoid him or didn't see him and hit the dog, ended up getting thrown, sustaining serious injuries. Okay. Okay. So now the Illinois statute says that if a dog, without provocation attacks or injures any person who is peaceably conducting himself in a place where he may lawfully be, the owner is liable for civil damages sustained. So Ryan's, so Ryan says this dog injured me. I was in a public place. I was allowed to be there and he injured me
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Forget about the 40 beers that I had before I got in my Yamaha. Right
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Now it went to court and the judge in order to prove that the judge has to find some overt act on behalf of the dog. Now Ryan says, well, the overt act was either lying in the street or walking to the street. Judge says lying in the street is not an overt act. Okay. You're just lying there. That's not an overt act and walking to the street was, but that wasn't at the time of the injury. So despite the dog being the cause of the injury, I'm going to go ahead and not give you money, Mr. Drunk, motorcyclists. And you know, hopefully you have fun paying your civil attorney, whatever he charged you for this BS
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Suit was the dog. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
The dog is not mentioned.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
So I'm going to assume. It's totally fine. Dog was completely
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yeah. And lived a great life after that. Awesome. You know what I'm going to say. Let me just say this dog owner though. Make sure your dog isn't sleeping in the middle of Colfax. Okay.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Well that's true. Well, he probably only sends them out to harass drunk drivers. I mean, this dog is probably yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Well, okay. So w w w knucklehead award, right? I mean, we, we have to, we have to rate this, right. So we have to rate our, are we rating the dog or are we rating our motorcycle
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Friend? I feel like the dog did everything
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Perfectly. Okay. I agree. Yeah. He's on the salable right now. Okay. So what about our friend? The motorcyclist. So go ahead.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
So I mean, the problems are, he was driving drunk, which is a knucklehead and he couldn't even avoid a prone dog in the middle of the road, on his motorcycle.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah. I mean, at least look out for the dog. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Uh, look out for the dog, look out for yourself. Like, what are you doing there? I mean, what are you giving them?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Um, like knuckleheads, I feel like at this point are a treasure to be a war. Right? I mean, we, we, we want to, if you get knuckleheads, you should be proud of yourself. That means you're really, really dumb.
Speaker 7 (31:17):
And you're really entertaining and entertaining. I wonder
Speaker 1 (31:20):
With the whole knuckle heads for this guy, because of his dislikable quality, I mean, you're suing a dog. Jesus. Who do you think you are? Yeah. Um, but, uh, so I'll give them, I'm going to give him one and a half knuckleheads for us.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I'm going to, I'm going to go a little higher because I think you're, uh, you're a complete knucklehead for not being able to, not just for driving drunk like that, but driving drunk enough where you can't avoid the dog and then not avoiding a dog, I'm going to give him, I'm going to give him a three and a half. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
All right. All right. I think that's an accurate a five. So, uh, that's it for DCO, T w I think that's going to call it a podcast. Russ, this was a fun one. Uh, we will, we will be, uh, updating you on events surrounding major and champ. We'll see whether or not they get their, a hall pass back into the white house. Maybe some behavioral training or something like that. We'll correct it. But maybe we get to a cabinet position. Yeah. Or, or maybe, uh, president Biden will get himself like a DocSend or something. That's just a little bit, little more low-key I dunno. Yeah. It could be. Time will tell
Speaker 3 (32:23):
As always hit us up on Twitter. Is this legal pod on Facebook HebetsMcCallin, or email us, let us know if you have any questions, any feedback. And we would love to hear from [inaudible]
Speaker 1 (32:34):
The pics. We'd love to see him, you know, where our Twitter stuff is. Let's see a man bye-bye [inaudible].