An Oshawa dog walker can’t sue the dog’s owners after it bit her, says Ontario’s Court of Appeal
Under provincial law, the dog walker owned the dog while supervising it, and was responsible for its behaviour
The Ontario Court of Appeal has determined that an Oshawa woman who worked as a part-time dog walker cannot sue her former clients after their dog bit her.
Under provincial law, the court said, a dog walker becomes the owner of an animal while supervising it. This law can also apply to dog groomers, and anyone else spending time with an animal, such as friends and family.
The dog walker, Amanda Nigro, says she suffered injury due to a bite as she put rubber booties on a boxer named Forrest Gump, who she’d been hired to walk three times a week. (The dog’s owners had told Nigro to put the booties on the dog.)
She has tried for four years to successfully sue the dog’s owners, but two courts have now said that under the province’s Dog Owners’ Liability Act, she was technically the owner at the time of the bite, and was therefore responsible for the animal’s behaviour.
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Per CBC, the dog did not have a history of aggression.
“As she approached Forrest with the booties in one hand, the dog lunged at her, bit into her left arm and started shaking it,” the court ruling said. “After she managed to get her arm loose, Forrest continued to attack her, biting her on various parts of her body. Nigro sustained injuries to her abdomen, left upper thigh, and both arms.”
The ruling said that, “As was found by the motion judge, she was unquestionably the person in a position to control the behaviour of the dogs at the critical time.”
Nigro’s lawyer, Shane Katz, told CBC that dog walkers should be aware of this liability. “The public needs to be very careful when they’re looking after or hanging out with somebody else’s dog. It’s opening up a whole new class of owners and exposing way more people to potential liability. And they probably don’t even realize it.”
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
