Do judges really want to give vicious dogs a free bite?

Do judges really want to give vicious dogs a free bite?

Cities, it seems, may be damned if they do and damned if they don’t when attempting to protect people from dangerous and vicious dogs.

Ordinances that define specific breeds of dogs as dangerous and vicious are challenged by dog owners and breeders who typically claim there are no intrinsically bad breeds, only bad owners and trainers. Now the Ohio Supreme Court is addressing a Youngstown vicious-dog ordinance on the grounds that since the breed of dog involved in the attack wasn’t specified by law, the owner had no way of knowing he could be held to account for what happened when he allowed the dogs to run loose.

What happened was that Jammie Traylor’s two Italian Mastiff/Cane Corso dogs that weighed 140 to 175 pounds attacked a Youngstown man and his small dog, injuring both. Traylor’s dogs were shot by police, and Traylor was charged with violating the city’s vicious-dog ordinance. The ordinance requires vicious dogs to be securely leashed or confined, and when Traylor was found guilty of violating that law, he was fined, sentenced to 90 days in jail and ordered to pay restitution to the victim.

Conviction overturned

The 7th District Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, finding that because the breed involved was not defined as vicious and because there had been no previous known attack by these dogs on a person, Traylor could not be found to have violated the vicious-dog ordinance.

If the Ohio Supreme Court upholds the Appeals Court’s finding, the possible repercussions are these:

- The city will have to broaden the definition of dangerous breeds to cover other potentially vicious breeds.

- The city will be left with an ordinance that says any dog other than a pit bull gets his first bite of a person for free.

Neither is acceptable.

The courts should adopt the common-sense posture of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who acknowledged that pornography was difficult to define, “but I know it when I see it.”

Seeing two dogs weighing a combined total of 300 pounds tear into a man and his small dog seems to fit any reasonable definition of vicious.

That this was the first time these animals demonstrated any degree of aggressiveness to man or another beast strains credulity.

Owners know their animals, and while no animal’s behavior can be predicted 100 percent of the time, an owner should be required to take reasonable precautions. It was not reasonable for Traylor to allow his potentially dangerous dogs to run loose, and the law should hold him to account for that.

Get out of jail free cards belong only on a Monopoly game board.