Sometimes It’s Perfectly Legal to be a Douchebag
May 10th, 2008 | by Tom Harper |And here to demonstrate this fact is the winner of our annual Inbred Knuckledragging Lowlife of the Year award. (If the link doesn’t work, here are some others.)
This sounds like a sick comedy skit, except that it’s just sick — not funny — and it really did happen. You couldn’t possibly make this up.
Try to imagine this: you’re standing there frantically screaming for your dog to come back as he/she runs out in front of a car and gets hit. Killed. And the next thing you know, the driver is suing YOU because your dead dog damaged his car. WTF???
Jeffery Ely of Cloquet, MN is the winner of the above award. A Miniature Pinscher dashed in front of his car as he was driving by, at the posted speed limit. Accidents happen.
But Ely supposedly discovered some damage to his car afterward, and he filed a lawsuit against the dog’s owners. He said they owed him $1,100 for damage to the front end of his car and for the time he missed from work in order to deal with car repairs.
No doubt he was sorely missed at his place of employment. “Cleanup on Aisle Seven. Damnit, where the hell is that F$%&!# Ely?!?”
Oh, and the dog weighed thirteen pounds. A 13-pound dog caused over a thousand dollars worth of damage to a car? Asshole!
A judge has dismissed the lawsuit. But still…How low can somebody go?
A final sick/funny twist to this story: Jeffery Ely is now claiming that the publicity from this incident has ruined his reputation.
4 Responses to “Sometimes It’s Perfectly Legal to be a Douchebag”
By Steve O on May 10, 2008 | Reply
Sometimes a good cock punch is all that is needed to fix people like this.
By Craig R. Harmon on May 10, 2008 | Reply
I’m not sure what the problem is. Unless the judge determined that the damage to the guy’s car was pre-existing or could not have been caused by the dog, I don’t get why the suit would be thrown out. If a dog owner fails to keep control of the dog, the owner is absolutely responsible for any damage done by the dog, as far as I’m concerned. I shouldn’t have to prove the case for negligence against the owner. The dog being in front of my car being driven legally is all the proof needed…unless the owner wishes to argue that he wanted his dog to be killed by a car driving legally in the road it must, of necessity and by definition, have been the owner’s negligence.
Steve O is right on this one: one good cock punch is just what this judge needs to fix him.
Just kidding about that last part but this ruling was just wrong. Unless there were no laws in this jurisdiction requiring dog owners to control their dogs, the judge blew it.
By Tom Harper on May 10, 2008 | Reply
Craig: That’s why I chose that title for the post. That F$#%&^#! didn’t break any laws and he probably had legal grounds for his lawsuit. The MSN story where I first read about this had a comment section at the end, and most of the commenters seemed to agree with you.
Me, I think there’s a point where the spirit of the law is more important than the letter (yes I know that’s a slippery slope). Like they used to say about Richard Nixon, the dog’s owner “has suffered enough.”
By Craig R. Harmon on May 11, 2008 | Reply
But, to me, it’s more than just that the driver didn’t break any laws. It is that the dog owner did (or at least, in the jurisdiction where I live he would have) and should have been held accountable.
And, not a rhetorical question, I’d really like to know, what spirit of what law is more important than holding owners responsible for the actions and damage of their dogs? Suppose that, instead of being crushed by the car the dog had mauled a three year old in her front yard — yes, I know, there’s that slippery slope thing…I’ve just taken us down it? It isn’t about adding to the owner’s suffering, in my opinion; it’s about making reparation. It’s not making the dog owner suffer more; it’s about reparation for the damage and time and losses due to the dog owner’s negligence to me. This is the reason for tort law. I damage you due to my own fault, I must make it right if possible.
But the crux of this decision, I guess, is my disagreement with the judge over the judge saying that the driver had not proven negligence. Well, negligence, in this case, in my opinion, proves itself: the owner failed to control his dog. Case closed. Judgment to the plaintiff. Next case!