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A Terrifying Dog Attack
If anyone ever needed to find ten-year-old Brian Yuzon, a good bet was to check down the street at Jeff Blackburn's house. Brian often hung out with his pal Jeff, even though he was afraid of Jeff's two family dogs. He was particularly frightened of Kemo, a Rottweiler-pit bull mix. In fact, whenever Brian went to visit Jeff, the Blackburns locked Kemo in a room.Brian had no reason to think Kemo wasn't safely inside when, on a spring day in 2001, he and a couple of other friends in Long Beach, California, went to Jeff's home after school. The boys headed into the Blackburns' backyard and waited as Jeff, whose parents weren't home, went inside to use the bathroom. When Jeff came out through the back door, Brian was horrified to see Kemo running outside, barking wildly. Jeff yelled for Brian to freeze, but the boy was already racing toward the front gate. He didn't make it.
With bared teeth, Kemo lunged and caught Brian's arm in his powerful jaws. Kemo clamped down again and again as Brian screamed hysterically. The other children tried to pull off the attacking dog, while a neighbor called for help. By the time paramedics arrived, the skin on Brian's upper arm and elbow was shredded and hanging. His physical injuries took nearly three hours of surgery to repair, leaving Brian with multiple scars and a deep fear of dogs.
Deeply upset, and facing medical bills that quickly climbed into the thousands, the Yuzon family brought a lawsuit against the Blackburns -- only to discover that they had no money in the bank. So, after learning that the Blackburns were renting their house from a man named Gerald Collins, the Yuzons reasoned that he, too, was responsible for Brian's injuries. The Yuzons assumed Collins had to have known that he was allowing a vicious animal on his property, because Kemo had escaped several times and frightened the neighbors.
And Tracy Blackburn, Kemo's owner, testified that whenever Collins visited the property, she would greet her landlord on the front porch. While they talked, Kemo would bark and lunge at the door. She also claimed that Collins once asked her to "pin the dogs up" before an insurance agent was to inspect the backyard. Why would Collins do that, the Yuzons wondered, if he didn't know there was more than one dog or that one dog was fierce? Didn't the owner have a duty to protect outsiders from any known dangers at his rental house?
Gerald Collins had a very different story. He acknowledged that the Blackburns' lease allowed them to keep a dog, but at the time he had agreed to this lease, the Blackburns' only dog was a blind springer spaniel. Collins also testified that he was not only unaware of any other dog on the property, but that he had never seen or heard a dog at all when he showed up at the door of the rental house. Contrary to the Yuzons' contention, Collins asserted that he had never heard from the neighbors about Kemo's escapes or seen the dog running wild, and the Blackburns never told him of any problems with Kemo. He didn't know about the danger, Collins said, so how could he be liable for the damage the dog caused?
Is Collins responsible for Brian's injuries? You be the judge! Then read on to see if the court actually ruled the way you did.
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