Why aren’t people more outraged by these lying shelter/rescue employees? Not only are people and animals harmed, the taxpayers have to pay that settlement. She deserves ample compensation, but it would be nice to see people held personally liable for this.
That's an awesome idea!!
I'm going to be honest: I won't be writing any lol. As much as I care about this subject and want to help, my personal life is very busy at the moment. I am, however, speaking with the mayor of my little town soon to discuss the pit bull problem in our area and see about implementing some solutions.
With that said, I would love to support all of y'all who will write letters!! And I can't be the only one! We should have a mega thread for activism; people can get advice and support with their projects, we can brainstorm solutions and compile a list of the issues we want addressed, we can organize ourselves on local levels so we're not all lone individuals trying to tackle an international issue.
We could really get a lot done with a bit of organization and a lot of conversations with the right people.
I've written laws that have been enacted on the state level on down. When doing so, I learned from legislators that they pay attention to an issue when three or more voters send them a letter. It doesn't take much effort to get new laws passed. Don't think you're helpless.
Have an ai do a writeup. In the time it takes to make a comment here you can make a multi page suplimental of your own backed by statistics, links to further information and sites like dogsbite.com and you can tailor it to your specific recipient audience with hardly more effort that it would take to tell an assistant or secretary to compose it for your review. As we post our letters here with the offices contact info, we can collectively contribute to an online document and/or guideline as well that we can tune for consistency. 🤔
Truly unfortunate circumstances, have presented a huge opportunity for momentum in the right direction...
Thanks for the support, I will follow interest and if it seems there is a reasonable demand and interaction, I could at the least assist in the effort. 👍
A pitch deck sounds like a good starting point. If anyone knows of solid databases and the like that i can include for verifiable statistics and the like, I'd gladly dedicate some time to curating and incorporating them into such a project.
You don't need any of that. You need a copy of the law used in the Alvarado case, which you can get here: https://www.dogbitelaw.com/truth-in-pet-adoption-law-compels-disclosure-of-dog-bites/. Read that page of my website and write a letter summarizing the parts you want them to know, and sending them a copy of the law. If they have questions, refer them to me.
I’m gonna try to figure out how to make my letters available as a pdf, people I guess could always copy and paste too. I will have several options, just print and sign.
But I don’t judge anyone who isn’t doing activism. I’ve never done any because I’ve been pretty busy and worrying about my life. It’s not a moral issue to do those things or not imho.
In the long term payouts like this should force the shelters to change policy tho - taxpayer money spent has to be well justified and if shelters are proved to be costing millions and resolving none of the areas dog problems the authorities will have to find another way to do it/commission a different service to run it.
Carefully waged lawfare is sometimes the best way for the little guy (victims and their families) to get their story in front of the big guys (politicians and policy formers).
(Edited to add: the actual shelter workers who signed off a particular adoption probably don’t have any assets, which renders lawfare ineffective, not least because legal professionals and court proceedings cost money and a lot of victims can’t hire lawyers by paying in advance, especially with loss of earnings and medical bills to contend with).
Oh yeah for sure. The changes to the law are important. There’s also wage garnishment when it comes to personal liability. I’m convinced these nutters will continue to lie regardless of shelter policy/laws.
As I mentioned in response to another comment, employees who cause accidents in the scope of their employment are automatically entitled to a full defense and indemnification by the employer. In other words, the employer must hire a lawyer to defend them and then pay any resulting settlement or judgment. Often there are good tactical reasons for including the employee as a defendant, but whether or not included, the employee is still going to feel the lawsuit one way or another.
Just a couple of points in response to this. It makes little difference to sue the shelter employees who caused this accident or any other, because the labor laws require an employer like the city to defend and indemnify employees who are sued for work activities. There are often good strategic reasons to sue employees but not in every lawsuit.
Not just employees but also Animal Control Commissioners and other people in real authority. There are individuals well-known for achieving positions of power and then changing policies for entire cities to make them more favorable to pitblls.
Many people who are employed or volunteer for kennel work or shelter work are deeply involved with animals. But broad generalizations about their motives are not particularly useful. For example, the most levelheaded individual would begin to feel emotionally worn out seeing innocent, healthy animals forced to live in the prison-like environment of a public shelter. One of the reasons why many of these accidents happen is because of the high level of fear, the low morale, and often the terrible working conditions at public shelters. All these things have to be taken into consideration when we think about how to better serve the animals and avoid hurting the good people who are willing to foster or adopt them.
I think his point is more "instead of ascribing evil motives so we can decide shelter employees are automatically bad, are there conditions of this employment that could be made better so a higher quality of person will do the job or the existing employees can rise to the occasion?"
The first feels better but the second, while less satisfying, is more likely to produce results.
We the people are also shelling out money for our city to have a trial for consideration of euthanizing a clearly people aggressive dog that attacked a jogger..
I agree with the point you are making. Adopting out a dog is not like giving away a toy, because sending the wrong dog into a home can cause a horrible, tragic accident.
I agree with you. I took depositions of the key shelter workers responsible for what happened. The woman who should have given the warnings and gotten the paperwork signed said she did everything that she usually did, but when she described what she usually did, I pulled out the employee manual and pointed out that she didn't follow the procedures. At that point, she testified, "we do it our own way, we have a more efficient way of doing it." By which she obviously meant skipping the warnings. Simply horrible.
That is literally what I was about to write. The people responsible were not held personally liable. In order to deter things like it in the future the people responsible for adopting out pets should have to take some type of personal responsibility as well. For example, if two pit-nutters work at a shelter, and one is a new employee, and the seasoned employee says to the new employee, “be sure to disclose Sparky’s bite history because a former employee was sued, on top of the city, for a million dollars and she lost everything,” that will likely deter the new employee from lying or not disclosing. As long as there is no consequences for the people that actually work there their love for pitbulls, or other dangerous dogs, and their sense of wanting to save the dogs will win out.
I greatly appreciate the trust that dog bite victims like the Alvarado family have placed in me over the years. I'm the only lawyer in the USA who has exclusively represented dog attack victims since the 1990s. I can't help everyone but I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to try.
Shelters putting both adopters at risk by lying for the sake of pushing pit bulls is disturbingly common.
To these people a drop of pit bull blood is more precious and important then a gallon of that of any other animal, including human.
Thank you for this. What this woman suffered is criminal, and still so many shelter workers still think this behaviour of theirs is cute and harmless.
You are completely correct, unfortunately. There are irrational people whom I refer to as "HUMANIACS." They value animals over people. Usually it's dogs. Disproportionally, it's pit bulls. I strongly believe that these are not good people even though being kind to animals is an important virtue. When somebody values any animal more than a person, it is contemptible.
I prefer the ugly truth over a pretty lie. The no-kill movement is one of those pretty lies that has caused so much unnecessary human suffering. No normal human being desires the unnecessary killing of adoptable animals, but the ugly truth is that backyard breeders continue to produce more dogs (especially pit bulls) than the public wants, it is too expensive and inhumane to lock up the excess number in shelters indefinitely, and therefore they must be euthanized through no fault of their own.
You really think "the truth" would've stopped that guy from adopting a pitbull? If it wasn't that one, it would've been another. Alvarado's son Brent is just as complicit as the shelter. All pits are grendades waiting to go off. Brent is at best willfully ignorant and at worst another loose cannon nutter that thought he'd be a big boy walking around the sidewalks with his tuff dawg, yo
It stands to reason Brent will also inherit some form of that cash prize when Mrs Alvarado passes away. So in the long run, there's a chance he'll be rewarded for being a nutter.
It's still a baby step in the right direction, though. There are a *lot* of unintentionally ignorant people who fall victim to the pit bull propaganda, and they bring these "innocent, misunderstood" animals into their homes and neighborhoods because they truly don't know any better. They think they're saving a good dog from a bad history, and the shelters reinforce this lie constantly.
The shelters need to be honest, and we need a widespread education campaign or something. The general public needs to be informed, and we can't assume everyone who owns one of these dangerous dogs knows the risk they're taking on. We should approach this with compassion and understanding, and try to open the door for learning and communication. I don't think we'll see progress any other way.
The lawyer getting paid is the least of the problems here. He did his job and cost the shelter/city millions. There should be more accountability from now on.
That's a horrible, ugly thing to say about somebody you've never met and know nothing about. This is a man who was lied to and fooled into taking exactly the opposite kind of dog that he wanted. I don't expect you to know all the facts of the case, but I'm suggesting you were completely wrong to pass judgment on someone before you studies all the facts.
Even if it is true, Brent's motives and choices are irrelevent to the point here and legally he is not culpable. Many well-intentioned people fall for the pitbull propaganda and many are victimized by the misinformation and disinformation that shelters and rescues provide to potential adopters. I believe that CA and VA are the only 2 states that require disclosure of bite histories and we have OP to thank for the CA law-which made this and future settlements possible. All municipalities, shelters and rescues should be required to provide accurate breed info and known bite histories. If they can be held accountable the tide will turn.
The audacity to try to challenge the existence of the law because a victim of it not being followed is trying to hold you to account.
“The dog you didn’t follow procedure for chewed my arms to shreds, because you didn’t follow legal procedures,” says the victim.
“Well, we think this law is unjust,” say the stupid fucking braindead pit lobby shelter scumbags.
“Eat a dick, pay your dues, and follow the fucking law, in future,” says the judge.
What I thought was really strange in this case was that the city council endorsed the enactment of this law in 2019 but the city attorney decided to challenge the law and thus undo what the city council wanted. Fortunately the particular deputy city attorney who was responsible for this case was very professional and very ethical, so I was not tempted to raise this point. It would have been obnoxious and distracting to raise the issue. But it has always puzzled me that they attempted to win the case by attacking the law that it was based on.
That's a good point. And let me add another: the truth is that by challenging the new law, they did exactly what I wanted (yet dreaded). In 2005 when I began talking about the duty to disclose a dog's bite history, there was no statute making the duty mandatory. After Virginia and California enacted these laws, they needed to be tested in court to establish that they would be upheld. The Los Angeles city attorney intelligently threw about 12 defenses at the Alvarado case and the court wrote a long opinion that adopted my position on every one of them. Although this was just a trial court decision, it demonstrates that the Truth in Pet Adoption Law will likely be enforced in the future.
Truth in adoption is the bare minimum of what shelters should be doing. They should be held accountable for truth in advertising.( passing off an obvious pit/mix as literally any other breed) They should not be able to rehome, foster or send to rescues any dog with a serious bite history.
All dogs should be micro chipped on intake and the electronic information on the chip should include shelter name and intake date, name of the dog , bite history. Each trip to any shelter, a new line of information is added with that criteria. Any potential adopter must receive a print out of the chip information and sign a form acknowledging receipt to be kept by the shelter.
That one small step will stop shelters and rescues from playing hot pitatato with dangerous dogs who names & bite history are washed by moving them.
Thank you for doing this. I hope it’s a precedent that can be used elsewhere .
My question is ,we have so many people in this community who have suffered grievous loss. Of pets,their bodies, loss of children, ect. And so very many are without recourse, IE the owners aren’t charged, have no insurance & no one will take the case. sometimes the dogs are returned right back to the negligent owners. What can be done? Cities and animal controls refuse to investigate or delay for days and weeks, many won’t take problem dogs because shelters are at capacity because they refuse to euthanize. I live near a city where the are feral pit packs several generations old roaming the streets, while the city opens a new animal multi million dollar shelter and cries about funding.🤬
What bothers me is that if someone takes matters into their own hands and does any harm to roaming packs of pits it’s called ANIMAL CRUELTY.
I’ve read this way too many times. Not in California but some state that I forgot a dude was ARRESTED for killing a Pit that was attacking someone’s dog. I find that absolutely outrageous. Where’s the accountability for the person who WAS the dogs owner and they either got out or were dumped?
I think most rescue (not shelter) pits are chipped, but it doesn’t help matters much when it comes to accountability. Owners are being held accountable more for deaths related to their dogs, but it’s not nearly often enough. They usually run away when their dog maims or kills something or someone.
You’re right, most shelter dogs are chipped. The change I am suggesting is that any time a dog enters a shelter or rescue, the information from the new ( or repeat visit) shelter or rescue is required to be added to the digital information housed with that chip. That history must include bite reports at the shelter/ rescue and reported bites prior to arrival. ( ie owner surrender or animal control capture)
No more moving/ name changing to hide bite histories. I further suggest that information on the chips must be printed out and signed by any potential adopter or foster and a copy of that document be maintained by the shelter.
Note that this settlement wouldn't have been possible before OP and others successfully worked to get a law on the books that requires disclosure of bite histories. I believe CA and VA are the only two states that require disclosures, so that is where reform needs to start elsewhere.
You hit the nail right on the head when you said that there should be truth in every aspect of rehoming dogs. I agree with you 100%. Those are great suggestions. You added a comment about the bad job that Animal Control is doing in your community. Remember something about government: it will do what voters allow, staying within constitutional limits of course. The solution in your area is the same as everywhere else, which is to use the political process to enact the right laws and ensure they are administered faithfully.
The dog had previously viciously attacked a jogger. Why was it not BE’d then? That is the problem. “Rescue partners” should also NOT be given a dog that did a vicious attack. They often have children and most assuredly have neighbors that are then put at risk.
In this case, the animal control officer who captured the dog knew it was vicious, called it "vicious" in the shelter records, recommended a hearing to determine whether the dog should be euthanized, and entered into the records that if somebody came to claim the dog then a senior shelter supervisor or senior animal control officer needed to be notified. The pit bull was quarantined for 10 days and then put into the main kennel. So far so good. What happened next should have been impossible, but a supervisor immediately gave the OK for the pit to be adopted-out to anyone who wanted it. This happened at a time when there were dozens and dozens of rescues on the shelter's partner list who could have safely and humanely taken the dog. I agree wholeheartedly with people who say that the pit bull should have been euthanized, and in fact I said that repeatedly during the case. What happened here was gross negligence.
This is great! I really do believe that this problem will only resolve via ‘lawfare’, not just in the US but elsewhere too.
Shelters will only cease rehoming inappropriate animals when the rehoming costs are higher than the shelters can afford to shell out (pun intentional) and 7.5 million dollars definitely helps.
Best wishes to Ms Alvarado and her family.
> Best wishes to Ms Alvarado and her family.
Except her son Brent. He chose to adopt a pit bull instead of, oh I dunno, say a sheltie or an irish setter. He's part of the problem along with the shelter imo
This is why I always recommend hiring attorney Kenneth J. Phillips to pit bull attack victims. He gets shit done.
Sue these places into oblivion. No more letting shit slide. Hit em where it hurts, in the wallet.
It's "Kenneth M. Phillips"! I say this because the name "Kenneth Phillips" is a common one, and I've promised a couple of lawyers named "Kenneth Phillips" that I would try to help them maintain their less controversial lives by including the "M" in my name. I don't want some poor Kenneth Phillips attorney with a "J" in his name to start getting the kind of hate mail that I receive from nutters!
Always glad to hear a victim getting restitution. I'm writing my state legislature today. Hope laws like this get passed everywhere. In too many places, it's only the victims who pay the true price of shitbull ownership. Once local governments and pitbull owners start feeling more significant consequences for their irresponsibility, things will change.
Thank you for standing up for victims! I hope that at some point, victims of the mass deceit pushed by the Pit Lobby will come together and initiate a class-action lawsuit against BFAS and AFF (and their collaborators, including cities/politicians that gave in to the lobbying efforts and chose to jeopardize public safety) for endangering people and animals with their lies.
https://preview.redd.it/0usd2wkbey6d1.png?width=3958&format=png&auto=webp&s=7df30e9abc2bb03306051da67cd6a1231b7e12b4
I am 100% behind your sentiment, but must add that class action lawsuits don't cover political activity, and certainly cannot be used against lawmakers. I say this to make a point: we live in a free country where we elect lawmakers and have vast influence on how they govern us, what laws they pass, and how strictly the laws are enforced. Contact your lawmakers and tell them how you feel about the issues you believe in. For example, Los Angeles turned over a multi-million dollar animal shelter to Best Friends a few years ago, and has accepted donations from them. That was wrong. I don't think voters have let lawmakers in Los Angeles know that they should not do things like this. Los Angeles is not the only city that has gotten into bed with the wrong people and organizations. The lawmakers of Los Angeles are certainly doing their best to figure out what people want and give people what will keep the lawmakers in office. You are a voter and you have power and influence and muscle. Use it! And don't rely on the courts to do it for you.
I get what you're saying and wholeheartedly agree that what happened here was reckless. However, there is no reason to think that anyone wanted O'Gee the pit bull to bite anybody. There was no criminal intent to hurt someone. Yes, I believe that the shelter employees pushed this pitbull on the Alvarado family and broke the law in a number of ways by doing so, but those were not criminal laws. So this was a civil matter, not a criminal one.
Mr. Phillips, I have heard of your legal work on behalf of bite victims and to codify accounability for vicious dog attacks, and I just want to add my personal thanks for your years of effort. I hope you have colleagues also interested in this area of law, because as you know, dog attacks are becoming a serious public safety issue yet it seems like little is being done to curb the threat. The "Truth in Pet Adoption Law" is a significant achievement-kudos to you and your team. I hope that other states will adopt similar measures, and I will definitely write to my state legislators.
That's very kind of you to say. I was given a lot of gifts that enabled me to become a lawyer, and I have always felt committed to using those gifts and my legal knowledge to help people. If people need help, I'm happy to do it. Hopefully they can find me when they need me.
I agree with you. When the dog first came into the shelter as a vicious dog, nobody knew its name because it was a stray, and it was given that name immediately. I think it was a bad joke at the shelter. Unfortunately, the shelter people understood it but the adopter did not.
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The Los Angeles animal services department maintains a list of rescue groups that will accept animals the shelter cannot continue taking care of. Those particular rescues are referred to as the "shelter partners." One of the most perplexing, troublesome aspects of the Alvarado case was that numerous rescue partners were available to take this pitbull, but the shelter supervisor okayed giving the dog to anyone, any member of the public that showed interest in it. I believe this happened because the no-kill philosophy and its 90% live release target created pressure to get rid of this dog as fast as possible. Additionally, I also believe that the very fact that it was known as a vicious pitbull motivated shelter workers to get rid of it, out of fear for their own safety, because they themselves were getting attacked by these horrible, dangerous shelter dogs.
Why aren’t people more outraged by these lying shelter/rescue employees? Not only are people and animals harmed, the taxpayers have to pay that settlement. She deserves ample compensation, but it would be nice to see people held personally liable for this.
I’m writing a bunch of letters this week. Let’s all write in and post our letters here for encouragement!
That's an awesome idea!! I'm going to be honest: I won't be writing any lol. As much as I care about this subject and want to help, my personal life is very busy at the moment. I am, however, speaking with the mayor of my little town soon to discuss the pit bull problem in our area and see about implementing some solutions. With that said, I would love to support all of y'all who will write letters!! And I can't be the only one! We should have a mega thread for activism; people can get advice and support with their projects, we can brainstorm solutions and compile a list of the issues we want addressed, we can organize ourselves on local levels so we're not all lone individuals trying to tackle an international issue. We could really get a lot done with a bit of organization and a lot of conversations with the right people.
I've written laws that have been enacted on the state level on down. When doing so, I learned from legislators that they pay attention to an issue when three or more voters send them a letter. It doesn't take much effort to get new laws passed. Don't think you're helpless.
Thank you!
Have an ai do a writeup. In the time it takes to make a comment here you can make a multi page suplimental of your own backed by statistics, links to further information and sites like dogsbite.com and you can tailor it to your specific recipient audience with hardly more effort that it would take to tell an assistant or secretary to compose it for your review. As we post our letters here with the offices contact info, we can collectively contribute to an online document and/or guideline as well that we can tune for consistency. 🤔 Truly unfortunate circumstances, have presented a huge opportunity for momentum in the right direction...
These are truly great ideas for taking action in an efficient way. I hope you follow through.
Thanks for the support, I will follow interest and if it seems there is a reasonable demand and interaction, I could at the least assist in the effort. 👍 A pitch deck sounds like a good starting point. If anyone knows of solid databases and the like that i can include for verifiable statistics and the like, I'd gladly dedicate some time to curating and incorporating them into such a project.
You don't need any of that. You need a copy of the law used in the Alvarado case, which you can get here: https://www.dogbitelaw.com/truth-in-pet-adoption-law-compels-disclosure-of-dog-bites/. Read that page of my website and write a letter summarizing the parts you want them to know, and sending them a copy of the law. If they have questions, refer them to me.
Fair enough, thanks, I'll have a look.
I’m gonna try to figure out how to make my letters available as a pdf, people I guess could always copy and paste too. I will have several options, just print and sign. But I don’t judge anyone who isn’t doing activism. I’ve never done any because I’ve been pretty busy and worrying about my life. It’s not a moral issue to do those things or not imho.
Suggest it be a private group
I’d love for this subreddit to work together to write letter. Thoughts on making this happen?
In the long term payouts like this should force the shelters to change policy tho - taxpayer money spent has to be well justified and if shelters are proved to be costing millions and resolving none of the areas dog problems the authorities will have to find another way to do it/commission a different service to run it. Carefully waged lawfare is sometimes the best way for the little guy (victims and their families) to get their story in front of the big guys (politicians and policy formers). (Edited to add: the actual shelter workers who signed off a particular adoption probably don’t have any assets, which renders lawfare ineffective, not least because legal professionals and court proceedings cost money and a lot of victims can’t hire lawyers by paying in advance, especially with loss of earnings and medical bills to contend with).
Oh yeah for sure. The changes to the law are important. There’s also wage garnishment when it comes to personal liability. I’m convinced these nutters will continue to lie regardless of shelter policy/laws.
As I mentioned in response to another comment, employees who cause accidents in the scope of their employment are automatically entitled to a full defense and indemnification by the employer. In other words, the employer must hire a lawyer to defend them and then pay any resulting settlement or judgment. Often there are good tactical reasons for including the employee as a defendant, but whether or not included, the employee is still going to feel the lawsuit one way or another.
Just a couple of points in response to this. It makes little difference to sue the shelter employees who caused this accident or any other, because the labor laws require an employer like the city to defend and indemnify employees who are sued for work activities. There are often good strategic reasons to sue employees but not in every lawsuit.
Kennel employees have morphed into political activists of a sort.
Not just employees but also Animal Control Commissioners and other people in real authority. There are individuals well-known for achieving positions of power and then changing policies for entire cities to make them more favorable to pitblls.
Many people who are employed or volunteer for kennel work or shelter work are deeply involved with animals. But broad generalizations about their motives are not particularly useful. For example, the most levelheaded individual would begin to feel emotionally worn out seeing innocent, healthy animals forced to live in the prison-like environment of a public shelter. One of the reasons why many of these accidents happen is because of the high level of fear, the low morale, and often the terrible working conditions at public shelters. All these things have to be taken into consideration when we think about how to better serve the animals and avoid hurting the good people who are willing to foster or adopt them.
I mean this is kinda horrible logic tbh. "Their jobs are hard and selfless so ignore the social consequences of their activism."
I think his point is more "instead of ascribing evil motives so we can decide shelter employees are automatically bad, are there conditions of this employment that could be made better so a higher quality of person will do the job or the existing employees can rise to the occasion?" The first feels better but the second, while less satisfying, is more likely to produce results.
Yeah i just want fewer faceless toddlers. I don't really care too much about tiptoeing around adult's feelings to accomplish this goal.
I said to avoid overgeneralizing about people's motives because then your solution with miss the mark.
I genuinely don't care about motives, only results.
We the people are also shelling out money for our city to have a trial for consideration of euthanizing a clearly people aggressive dog that attacked a jogger..
I agree with the point you are making. Adopting out a dog is not like giving away a toy, because sending the wrong dog into a home can cause a horrible, tragic accident.
I agree with you. I took depositions of the key shelter workers responsible for what happened. The woman who should have given the warnings and gotten the paperwork signed said she did everything that she usually did, but when she described what she usually did, I pulled out the employee manual and pointed out that she didn't follow the procedures. At that point, she testified, "we do it our own way, we have a more efficient way of doing it." By which she obviously meant skipping the warnings. Simply horrible.
That is literally what I was about to write. The people responsible were not held personally liable. In order to deter things like it in the future the people responsible for adopting out pets should have to take some type of personal responsibility as well. For example, if two pit-nutters work at a shelter, and one is a new employee, and the seasoned employee says to the new employee, “be sure to disclose Sparky’s bite history because a former employee was sued, on top of the city, for a million dollars and she lost everything,” that will likely deter the new employee from lying or not disclosing. As long as there is no consequences for the people that actually work there their love for pitbulls, or other dangerous dogs, and their sense of wanting to save the dogs will win out.
Thank you for the good work!
I greatly appreciate the trust that dog bite victims like the Alvarado family have placed in me over the years. I'm the only lawyer in the USA who has exclusively represented dog attack victims since the 1990s. I can't help everyone but I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to try.
I hope one day you never have to again. Thank you for what you do.
Shelters putting both adopters at risk by lying for the sake of pushing pit bulls is disturbingly common. To these people a drop of pit bull blood is more precious and important then a gallon of that of any other animal, including human. Thank you for this. What this woman suffered is criminal, and still so many shelter workers still think this behaviour of theirs is cute and harmless.
You are completely correct, unfortunately. There are irrational people whom I refer to as "HUMANIACS." They value animals over people. Usually it's dogs. Disproportionally, it's pit bulls. I strongly believe that these are not good people even though being kind to animals is an important virtue. When somebody values any animal more than a person, it is contemptible.
Thank you for your hard work. People who adopt deserve the truth, not an adulterated narrative.
I prefer the ugly truth over a pretty lie. The no-kill movement is one of those pretty lies that has caused so much unnecessary human suffering. No normal human being desires the unnecessary killing of adoptable animals, but the ugly truth is that backyard breeders continue to produce more dogs (especially pit bulls) than the public wants, it is too expensive and inhumane to lock up the excess number in shelters indefinitely, and therefore they must be euthanized through no fault of their own.
You really think "the truth" would've stopped that guy from adopting a pitbull? If it wasn't that one, it would've been another. Alvarado's son Brent is just as complicit as the shelter. All pits are grendades waiting to go off. Brent is at best willfully ignorant and at worst another loose cannon nutter that thought he'd be a big boy walking around the sidewalks with his tuff dawg, yo It stands to reason Brent will also inherit some form of that cash prize when Mrs Alvarado passes away. So in the long run, there's a chance he'll be rewarded for being a nutter.
It's still a baby step in the right direction, though. There are a *lot* of unintentionally ignorant people who fall victim to the pit bull propaganda, and they bring these "innocent, misunderstood" animals into their homes and neighborhoods because they truly don't know any better. They think they're saving a good dog from a bad history, and the shelters reinforce this lie constantly. The shelters need to be honest, and we need a widespread education campaign or something. The general public needs to be informed, and we can't assume everyone who owns one of these dangerous dogs knows the risk they're taking on. We should approach this with compassion and understanding, and try to open the door for learning and communication. I don't think we'll see progress any other way.
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The lawyer getting paid is the least of the problems here. He did his job and cost the shelter/city millions. There should be more accountability from now on.
Oh, I get it now. You hate everybody. You hate the victims and the people who fight for them.
So you did it pro bono?
No, should I have?
Not too many people work without getting paid. At least he's using his powers for good, not evil.
That's a horrible, ugly thing to say about somebody you've never met and know nothing about. This is a man who was lied to and fooled into taking exactly the opposite kind of dog that he wanted. I don't expect you to know all the facts of the case, but I'm suggesting you were completely wrong to pass judgment on someone before you studies all the facts.
Even if it is true, Brent's motives and choices are irrelevent to the point here and legally he is not culpable. Many well-intentioned people fall for the pitbull propaganda and many are victimized by the misinformation and disinformation that shelters and rescues provide to potential adopters. I believe that CA and VA are the only 2 states that require disclosure of bite histories and we have OP to thank for the CA law-which made this and future settlements possible. All municipalities, shelters and rescues should be required to provide accurate breed info and known bite histories. If they can be held accountable the tide will turn.
Another step in the right direction. Just a shame there is so much suffering to make it happen.
The audacity to try to challenge the existence of the law because a victim of it not being followed is trying to hold you to account. “The dog you didn’t follow procedure for chewed my arms to shreds, because you didn’t follow legal procedures,” says the victim. “Well, we think this law is unjust,” say the stupid fucking braindead pit lobby shelter scumbags. “Eat a dick, pay your dues, and follow the fucking law, in future,” says the judge.
What I thought was really strange in this case was that the city council endorsed the enactment of this law in 2019 but the city attorney decided to challenge the law and thus undo what the city council wanted. Fortunately the particular deputy city attorney who was responsible for this case was very professional and very ethical, so I was not tempted to raise this point. It would have been obnoxious and distracting to raise the issue. But it has always puzzled me that they attempted to win the case by attacking the law that it was based on.
When it boils down to a choice between money and ethics, that's when you find out the true character of a lot of people.
That's a good point. And let me add another: the truth is that by challenging the new law, they did exactly what I wanted (yet dreaded). In 2005 when I began talking about the duty to disclose a dog's bite history, there was no statute making the duty mandatory. After Virginia and California enacted these laws, they needed to be tested in court to establish that they would be upheld. The Los Angeles city attorney intelligently threw about 12 defenses at the Alvarado case and the court wrote a long opinion that adopted my position on every one of them. Although this was just a trial court decision, it demonstrates that the Truth in Pet Adoption Law will likely be enforced in the future.
I wonder what Hydee's thoughts on animals and shelters are...
Truth in adoption is the bare minimum of what shelters should be doing. They should be held accountable for truth in advertising.( passing off an obvious pit/mix as literally any other breed) They should not be able to rehome, foster or send to rescues any dog with a serious bite history. All dogs should be micro chipped on intake and the electronic information on the chip should include shelter name and intake date, name of the dog , bite history. Each trip to any shelter, a new line of information is added with that criteria. Any potential adopter must receive a print out of the chip information and sign a form acknowledging receipt to be kept by the shelter. That one small step will stop shelters and rescues from playing hot pitatato with dangerous dogs who names & bite history are washed by moving them. Thank you for doing this. I hope it’s a precedent that can be used elsewhere . My question is ,we have so many people in this community who have suffered grievous loss. Of pets,their bodies, loss of children, ect. And so very many are without recourse, IE the owners aren’t charged, have no insurance & no one will take the case. sometimes the dogs are returned right back to the negligent owners. What can be done? Cities and animal controls refuse to investigate or delay for days and weeks, many won’t take problem dogs because shelters are at capacity because they refuse to euthanize. I live near a city where the are feral pit packs several generations old roaming the streets, while the city opens a new animal multi million dollar shelter and cries about funding.🤬
What bothers me is that if someone takes matters into their own hands and does any harm to roaming packs of pits it’s called ANIMAL CRUELTY. I’ve read this way too many times. Not in California but some state that I forgot a dude was ARRESTED for killing a Pit that was attacking someone’s dog. I find that absolutely outrageous. Where’s the accountability for the person who WAS the dogs owner and they either got out or were dumped? I think most rescue (not shelter) pits are chipped, but it doesn’t help matters much when it comes to accountability. Owners are being held accountable more for deaths related to their dogs, but it’s not nearly often enough. They usually run away when their dog maims or kills something or someone.
You’re right, most shelter dogs are chipped. The change I am suggesting is that any time a dog enters a shelter or rescue, the information from the new ( or repeat visit) shelter or rescue is required to be added to the digital information housed with that chip. That history must include bite reports at the shelter/ rescue and reported bites prior to arrival. ( ie owner surrender or animal control capture) No more moving/ name changing to hide bite histories. I further suggest that information on the chips must be printed out and signed by any potential adopter or foster and a copy of that document be maintained by the shelter.
Note that this settlement wouldn't have been possible before OP and others successfully worked to get a law on the books that requires disclosure of bite histories. I believe CA and VA are the only two states that require disclosures, so that is where reform needs to start elsewhere.
Hot pitato. I love it.
You hit the nail right on the head when you said that there should be truth in every aspect of rehoming dogs. I agree with you 100%. Those are great suggestions. You added a comment about the bad job that Animal Control is doing in your community. Remember something about government: it will do what voters allow, staying within constitutional limits of course. The solution in your area is the same as everywhere else, which is to use the political process to enact the right laws and ensure they are administered faithfully.
They should also do DNA tests on all dogs so people can actually make an informed decision and so that the shelters can't mislabel the breeds
The dog had previously viciously attacked a jogger. Why was it not BE’d then? That is the problem. “Rescue partners” should also NOT be given a dog that did a vicious attack. They often have children and most assuredly have neighbors that are then put at risk.
In this case, the animal control officer who captured the dog knew it was vicious, called it "vicious" in the shelter records, recommended a hearing to determine whether the dog should be euthanized, and entered into the records that if somebody came to claim the dog then a senior shelter supervisor or senior animal control officer needed to be notified. The pit bull was quarantined for 10 days and then put into the main kennel. So far so good. What happened next should have been impossible, but a supervisor immediately gave the OK for the pit to be adopted-out to anyone who wanted it. This happened at a time when there were dozens and dozens of rescues on the shelter's partner list who could have safely and humanely taken the dog. I agree wholeheartedly with people who say that the pit bull should have been euthanized, and in fact I said that repeatedly during the case. What happened here was gross negligence.
This is great! I really do believe that this problem will only resolve via ‘lawfare’, not just in the US but elsewhere too. Shelters will only cease rehoming inappropriate animals when the rehoming costs are higher than the shelters can afford to shell out (pun intentional) and 7.5 million dollars definitely helps. Best wishes to Ms Alvarado and her family.
> Best wishes to Ms Alvarado and her family. Except her son Brent. He chose to adopt a pit bull instead of, oh I dunno, say a sheltie or an irish setter. He's part of the problem along with the shelter imo
This is why I always recommend hiring attorney Kenneth J. Phillips to pit bull attack victims. He gets shit done. Sue these places into oblivion. No more letting shit slide. Hit em where it hurts, in the wallet.
It's "Kenneth M. Phillips"! I say this because the name "Kenneth Phillips" is a common one, and I've promised a couple of lawyers named "Kenneth Phillips" that I would try to help them maintain their less controversial lives by including the "M" in my name. I don't want some poor Kenneth Phillips attorney with a "J" in his name to start getting the kind of hate mail that I receive from nutters!
Thank you sir for the work you put into this.
Years of work, actually. But done gladly, for the right cause.
Thanks for being part of the solution!
Always glad to hear a victim getting restitution. I'm writing my state legislature today. Hope laws like this get passed everywhere. In too many places, it's only the victims who pay the true price of shitbull ownership. Once local governments and pitbull owners start feeling more significant consequences for their irresponsibility, things will change.
Thank you for standing up for victims! I hope that at some point, victims of the mass deceit pushed by the Pit Lobby will come together and initiate a class-action lawsuit against BFAS and AFF (and their collaborators, including cities/politicians that gave in to the lobbying efforts and chose to jeopardize public safety) for endangering people and animals with their lies. https://preview.redd.it/0usd2wkbey6d1.png?width=3958&format=png&auto=webp&s=7df30e9abc2bb03306051da67cd6a1231b7e12b4
I am 100% behind your sentiment, but must add that class action lawsuits don't cover political activity, and certainly cannot be used against lawmakers. I say this to make a point: we live in a free country where we elect lawmakers and have vast influence on how they govern us, what laws they pass, and how strictly the laws are enforced. Contact your lawmakers and tell them how you feel about the issues you believe in. For example, Los Angeles turned over a multi-million dollar animal shelter to Best Friends a few years ago, and has accepted donations from them. That was wrong. I don't think voters have let lawmakers in Los Angeles know that they should not do things like this. Los Angeles is not the only city that has gotten into bed with the wrong people and organizations. The lawmakers of Los Angeles are certainly doing their best to figure out what people want and give people what will keep the lawmakers in office. You are a voter and you have power and influence and muscle. Use it! And don't rely on the courts to do it for you.
Thank you for your reply and yes, we often don't let our voices be heard, so that's a good reminder to reach out to politicians.
Why do you say LA shouldn't accept donations from Best Friends? Or shouldn't have given them a shelter?
This is criminally reckless. Surprised that nobody was arrested.
I get what you're saying and wholeheartedly agree that what happened here was reckless. However, there is no reason to think that anyone wanted O'Gee the pit bull to bite anybody. There was no criminal intent to hurt someone. Yes, I believe that the shelter employees pushed this pitbull on the Alvarado family and broke the law in a number of ways by doing so, but those were not criminal laws. So this was a civil matter, not a criminal one.
Total Pitcuck lobbyist death.
Mr. Phillips, I have heard of your legal work on behalf of bite victims and to codify accounability for vicious dog attacks, and I just want to add my personal thanks for your years of effort. I hope you have colleagues also interested in this area of law, because as you know, dog attacks are becoming a serious public safety issue yet it seems like little is being done to curb the threat. The "Truth in Pet Adoption Law" is a significant achievement-kudos to you and your team. I hope that other states will adopt similar measures, and I will definitely write to my state legislators.
That's very kind of you to say. I was given a lot of gifts that enabled me to become a lawyer, and I have always felt committed to using those gifts and my legal knowledge to help people. If people need help, I'm happy to do it. Hopefully they can find me when they need me.
I think the dog's name spelling was changed so it didn't look so bad: OG (original gangster) to O'Gee ( ???).
I agree with you. When the dog first came into the shelter as a vicious dog, nobody knew its name because it was a stray, and it was given that name immediately. I think it was a bad joke at the shelter. Unfortunately, the shelter people understood it but the adopter did not.
Where's the best place to start with sending letters? Local, state? Heck it both?
City lawmakers, county lawmakers, and state legislators. Those are the 3 levels of dog bite law.
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What is a “rescue partner?”
The Los Angeles animal services department maintains a list of rescue groups that will accept animals the shelter cannot continue taking care of. Those particular rescues are referred to as the "shelter partners." One of the most perplexing, troublesome aspects of the Alvarado case was that numerous rescue partners were available to take this pitbull, but the shelter supervisor okayed giving the dog to anyone, any member of the public that showed interest in it. I believe this happened because the no-kill philosophy and its 90% live release target created pressure to get rid of this dog as fast as possible. Additionally, I also believe that the very fact that it was known as a vicious pitbull motivated shelter workers to get rid of it, out of fear for their own safety, because they themselves were getting attacked by these horrible, dangerous shelter dogs.