Patches Nearby: Pierce County Appeals $2.2 Million Jury Award In Pit Bull Lawsuit

Pierce County filed notice Wednesday of its intent to appeal the Aug. 12 jury award of $2.2 million to a 63-year-old Gig Harbor woman who was severely mauled when two pit bulls attacked her in her home.

If the Pierce County Superior Court ruling is left standing, the county will have to pay $928,500 to plaintiff Sue Gorman, who suffered wounds to her face, neck, breasts, nose, arms and hands in the 2007 attack.

The jury held Zachary Martin, owner of one of the pit bulls, and his mother, Shellie Wilson, responsible for $1.1 million in damages. In addition, Jacqueline Evans-Hubbard, a neighbor of Martin and Wilson who had left her pit bull with them, must pay Gordon $110,000.

Jurors found Evans-Hubbard 5 percent responsible for the incident and said Gorman contributed 1 percent to the attack.

During trial, the plaintiff’s attorney argued that the county shared in the blame for not following up on earlier complaints about vicious dogs at the home of Martin and Wilson.

Brad Westphal, attorney for Wilson and Martin, was out of the office Wednesday and unavailable for comment. Likewise, Gordon’s attorney, Michael McKasy, was in court and not immediately available for comment.

However, David Lancaster, attorney for Evans-Hubbard, said his client was responsible for only 5 percent of the damages.

“There is no joint and several liability,” he said. “So, no, we have no plans to appeal.”

County spokesman Hunter George said the verdict “really sets a precedent that should trouble local governments.”

According to a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, the county is appealing because its animal-control officers acted reasonably given the information available to them, and because Washington does not make local governments liable for the carelessness of dog owners merely because cities and counties have regulatory authority over dogs.

“Contrary to reports in the media, Pierce County Animal Control was never contacted by Ms. Gorman with any complaints about these dogs,” said Mark Maenhout, Pierce County’s risk manager. “Animal Control received two complaints--not the 14 that has been reported--about these dogs from neighbors stating that the dogs were roaming the neighborhood six months before this biting incident.”

Animal Control officers took reasonable steps to address the complaints, Maenhout noted, included issuing citations. Neither the neighbors nor Ms. Gorman claimed these dogs had bitten anyone prior to the attack on Gorman, he said.

“Pierce County remains sympathetic to Ms. Gorman and mindful of the injuries she suffered,” Maenhout said. “However, the financial responsibility for roaming dogs lies with their owners, not Pierce County taxpayers.”

Pierce County Deputy Prosecutor Ron Williams, who represented the county in the Gorman case, said the county appealed the trial court’s denial of a motion to dismiss the case on grounds the law does not allow this type of claim against the county.

While the appellate court was not obligated at that time to hear the appeal, it is now required to do so following trial, Williams said.

“The general basis we will likely appeal now is that there is a principal in our state which says that a government agency is not to blame when it does its normal government function, unless there is some special duty owed to its citizens. Generally, it’s a theory that there is no such thing as a negligent governance. It’s called the public duty doctrine.”

There were other rulings during the trial that will be raised in the appeal, Williams said.

“Some of the news stories I saw said the county ignored 14 complaints about these dogs. That was a gross misstatement of the facts,” Williams said. “The county took over animal control duties in 2005-2006. There were 10 complaints about this dog owner--not these dogs --that were made about previous dogs to the Tacoma Humane Society, which is not a government agency, not Pierce County.

“The judge allowed all kinds of evidence about those previous incidences, which the county had no knowledge of.”

At the same time, Williams acknowledged that the Tacoma Humane Society had been acting under contract to the county for animal-control services prior to 2005.

Gidgette Chesley, one of 12 jurors in the Gordon case, said deliberations went fairly smoothly, although there was not always agreement on each point.

“The past medical (expenses) was a given,” she said. “Then we had to decide if we were going to award for everything else--future economic, pain, suffering, damage to her home, etc.

“We heard testimony that she should could possibly need one more surgery to help with the scarring. Other things were really tough to come up with for what she went through.”

Chesley, an office manager for the Patriots Landing military retirement community in Dupont, said all of the attorneys proposed different dollar amounts for the damage, but added that jurors came up with their own figures based on the judge’s instructions.

“When we initially took a vote, we had three jurors saying Pierce County was not liable,” Chesley said. “That took a full day of deliberations right at the beginning. Then there was the question of whether Sue Gorman was negligent in any way. That started off about half and half, but we just went through the chain of events.

“When it came to the percentage in the Martin household, I was the only one who did not agree. Everyone else was on a different page. But we just needed 10 out of 12 jurors--probably because it was a civil case.”

Expert legal witness Richard Polsky tracks cash settlements and monetary awards by juries in dog-attack cases throughout the United States.

According to his website, court-ordered monetary damages and cash settlements in seven such cases have totaled $14.8 million since 2009.

The largest dollar amount of $7 million was awarded last September to the mother of a 7-year-old Texas boy who was mauled to death by two pit bulls while skateboarding. At $2.2 million, Pierce County’s case was the second-largest jury award.

The third was in November 2009, when a jury awarded $1.5 million to a 30-year-old Middlesex County, N.J., woman over a 2006 pit bull attack. The attack happened when the plaintiff entered her father’s unlit house at night.