Derek Achong

A doc­tor from east Trinidad has scored a pre­lim­i­nary vic­to­ry in her bid for com­pen­sa­tion from her neigh­bours af­ter their dogs at­tacked her and mauled her dog to death.

In an oral de­ci­sion de­liv­ered a vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed an ap­pli­ca­tion for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment to Dr Aleena Ish­mael, of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #2, Val­sayn South, in her law­suit against her next-door neigh­bours Navin Bir­bal and Sati Ram­nar­ine.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, Ish­mael’s lawyer Richard Jag­gasar ar­gued that the cou­ple did not have a re­al­is­tic prospect of suc­cess­ful­ly re­sist­ing the case based on the claims in their filed de­fence. The cou­ple ad­mit­ted that their dogs es­caped their prop­er­ty be­fore en­ter­ing Ish­mael’s yard and at­tack­ing her and her dog but chal­lenged whether Ish­mael’s dog died as a re­sult of the maul­ing.

In de­cid­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad not­ed that the de­fence had to be re­al­is­tic and not fan­ci­ful. He re­ject­ed the cou­ple’s con­tention on the cause of death of Ish­mael’s dog as he point­ed out the link was ob­vi­ous based on the fact that Ish­mael’s dog died short­ly af­ter the at­tack.

De­spite find­ing the cou­ple li­able in the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad did not im­me­di­ate­ly as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion they have to pay to Ish­mael as he point­ed out that she still had to file ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence which can be chal­lenged by the cou­ple.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered that the com­pen­sa­tion be as­sessed by a High Court Mas­ter at a lat­er date.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, Ish­mael claimed the cou­ple’s three mixed breed dogs fre­quent­ly es­caped from their prop­er­ty and roamed the com­mu­ni­ty be­fore the in­ci­dent on De­cem­ber 30, 2021.

She saidt she was on her prop­er­ty when three dogs en­tered and at­tacked her and her Mal­tese pup­py, Malakai. One of the dogs, iden­ti­fied as Rusty, mauled Malakai, while Ish­mael, who claimed to be nurs­ing a foot frac­ture at the time, man­aged to get away as her moth­er heard her screams and chased the oth­er dogs away.

Ish­mael at­tempt­ed to stop her pup­py’s bleed­ing us­ing her med­ical train­ing but was un­suc­cess­ful. She said while she was not bit­ten, her foot in­jury was ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the in­ci­dent and she had to miss sev­er­al days of work while she re­cov­ered.

Ish­mael is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for her med­ical treat­ment and $40,000 for her emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal in­juries. She is al­so seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for her loss of earn­ings when she had to miss work while re­cov­er­ing from her in­juries, $30,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the death of her dog and the $1,300 she spent for his cre­ma­tion.

Ish­mael was ini­tial­ly seek­ing an or­der for the cou­ple’s dog to be eu­th­a­nized un­der Sec­tion 19 of the Dog Con­trol Act. Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, a court can or­der the de­struc­tion of a Class A dog in cir­cum­stances where it has in­jured or killed a per­son or an­i­mal out­side of pri­vate premis­es.

The leg­is­la­tion iden­ti­fies six dog breeds as Class A and dogs bred from those breeds are al­so clas­si­fied as such. The breeds are Amer­i­can Pit Bull Ter­ri­er, Amer­i­can Stafford­shire Ter­ri­er, Amer­i­can Bul­ly, Do­go Ar­genti­no, Japan­ese Tosa, and Fi­la Brasileiro.

At a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing of the case last year, the cou­ple chal­lenged the pro­posed re­lief as they claimed one of their dogs is a Ger­man Shep­herd and the oth­er two are Ger­man Shep­herd cross­es.

Ish­mael’s lawyer sub­se­quent­ly with­drew that as­pect of her case.

The cou­ple was rep­re­sent­ed by Lasana Mur­ray.