A Dog’s Worth?
By Bryce Jefferson and Drake Mann1
I
n February 2013, Newell Gill filed a complaint in Lincoln County against Frankie Newby.2 Gill alleged that he, three friends, and Gill’s two “Treeing Walker” coon dogs, Buck and Smoke, had gone camping in the White River National Wildlife Refuge to hunt raccoons. Around 9 o’clock at night, Buck and Smoke signaled that they had treed a raccoon. But the dogs had run onto private land. Landowner Newby appeared at the campsite, allegedly drunk, and threatened to shoot the dogs—and Gill, too, if he tried to get them. Gill nevertheless went looking for the dogs, found Buck, and returned to camp, whereupon Newby shot Buck behind the shoulder with a high-powered rifle. “Plaintiff had Buck on a leash. When Buck fell, his nose touched plaintiff ’s boot. . . . Buck died in those woods on that night. He was four and a half years old. Plaintiff had him since he was a puppy.” Dogs arouse strong emotions in humans. We erect monuments to them.3 They are man’s best friend.4 If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.5 They inspire almost-poetic judicial writing. In a case establishing that dogs could be subject to larceny, Justice Battle wrote: They are possessed of many elements of value and utility to the human race—the most valuable, “ranking among the noblest representatives of the animal kingdom, and being justly esteemed for their intelligence, sagacity, fidelity, watchfulness, affection and above all for their natural companionship with man,” being true and faithful to their masters under all circumstances.6 But, in the end, “[d]ogs are property.”7 Dog owners can sue for the conversion of a dog. In Elliott v. Hurst,8 the defendant responded to an ad offering wolf-hybrid dogs for sale; she saw that one of the dogs, Rambo, had an infected leg and urged the plaintiff to have Rambo’s leg treated. The plaintiff agreed, but the veterinarian ultimately had to amputate Rambo’s leg. The defendant falsely claimed that she was authorized to
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pick up Rambo; she “personally took possession of the dog and by her own account, gave it to an exotic pet farm where he was euthanized.” The plaintiff testified he paid $1,400 for Rambo and could have sold him for $3,000, but conceded that he did not believe “the three-legged dog” was worth as much and never gave Rambo a post-surgical value. The trial court awarded the plaintiff $1,400 in compensatory damages and $25,000 in punitive damages, but the supreme court reversed because there was no evidence of the dog’s market value “at the time and place of the conversion.” By far, most of the reported cases involving dogs and their value arose in suits against railroads. From 1897, when the Supreme Court established that dogs are property, until the early 1940s, there were at least 24 reported cases in which dog owners sued railroads for negligently killing their dogs.9 Trains have killed “pointer dogs,”10 pointer bitches,11 “an Irish setter dog,”12 and just plain “hunting dogs.”13 One plaintiff recovered $80 for a “hog dog”—one that he used to hunt both his own hogs and to hunt hogs “for everybody else that needed his services,” for which he earned $5 per day.”14 Plaintiffs have recovered damages ranging from $2515 or $5016 to as much as $250 for a dog that took ribbons and prizes.17 One $250 jury award was for a “bloodhound bitch” that had “performed feats in tracing and finding escaped prisoners.” Once, she caught an escapee “after tracing him for about seven or eight miles and swimming a quarter of a mile; found him in the hollow of a cypress tree in a lake.” On the day she was killed, she was attempting to trail a man and “seemed unconscious of the approach of the train.”18 When a person kills a dog intentionally, the defendant’s intent seems to influence the jury’s assessment of the dog’s value. In Tallman v. State,19 for example, a jury convicted the defendant of malicious mischief for killing a dog with a shotgun. The defendant said he killed it “under necessity . . . to prevent injury to his
