Derek Achong

A doc­tor from east Trinidad has sued her neigh­bours af­ter their dogs at­tacked her and mauled her dog to death. 

The law­suit brought by Dr Aleena Ish­mael, of Bam­boo Set­tle­ment #2, Val­sayn South, against her next door neigh­bours Navin Bir­bal and Sati Ram­nar­ine came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ish­mael is claim­ing that the cou­ple’s three mixed breed dogs would fre­quent­ly es­cape from their prop­er­ty and roam the com­mu­ni­ty be­fore the in­ci­dent on De­cem­ber 30, last year. 

Ish­mael claimed that 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. 

Ish­mael claimed that 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. 

Through the law­suit, Ish­mael is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for her med­ical treat­ment and $40,000 for her emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal in­juries. 

She is al­so seek­ing $9,500 for her loss of in­come at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal and $45,000 for her loss of in­come from pri­vate jobs and house calls dur­ing the pe­ri­od she was re­cov­er­ing. 

She has claimed $30,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of her dog’s life and $1,300 for his cre­ma­tion. 

She is al­so seek­ing an or­der un­der the Dog Con­trol Act for the dog re­spon­si­ble for her dog’s death to be eu­thanised and for the oth­er two to be prop­er­ly con­fined to the cou­ple’s prop­er­ty. 

In de­fence of the law­suit, the cou­ple ad­mit­ted that the dogs es­caped but claimed it was be­cause one of their ten­ants left the gate open with­out their knowl­edge. 

They al­so con­tend that the dogs were able to en­ter Ish­mael’s prop­er­ty be­cause it is un­fenced and that Ish­mael’s pup­py at­tacked their dog caus­ing it to re­tal­i­ate. 

They claimed that they apol­o­gised af­ter the in­ci­dent, re­moved the dog that killed Ish­mael’s pup­py and made changes to their prop­er­ty to en­sure that the oth­er two dogs could not es­cape in the fu­ture. 

They claimed that they al­so of­fered to pur­chase a new dog for Ish­mael but she re­fused and threat­ened to kill their dogs.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Seep­er­sad ac­cept­ed un­der­tak­ings from the cou­ple that the dog re­spon­si­ble for the death of Ish­mael’s pup­py would re­main away from their prop­er­ty and the two dogs would be prop­er­ly se­cured.

 Seep­er­sad warned that breach of the un­der­tak­ing had the same ef­fect as breach­ing an in­junc­tion and that the cou­ple may face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a prison sen­tence if found to be in con­tra­ven­tion. 

Seep­er­sad then raised con­cerns over Ish­mael’s case as he ques­tioned how she could claim loss of earn­ings while be­ing em­ployed by the Min­istry of Health. 

Ish­mael’s lawyer Richard Jag­gasar point­ed out that she is not en­ti­tled to sick leave un­der her con­tract and was not paid for the days of work she missed while re­cov­er­ing.

He al­so not­ed that Ish­mael has not ful­ly re­cov­ered and still re­quires crutch­es for mo­bil­i­ty.  

Seep­er­sad al­so queried Ish­mael’s claim for com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of her pup­py’s life as he point­ed out that lit­i­gants would on­ly usu­al­ly make such claims over the loss of hu­man life. 

Jag­gasar claimed that the com­pen­sa­tion claim was based on the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with pur­chas­ing and car­ing for the pup­py. 

“We draft­ed the fig­ure based on the love and care that my client and her fam­i­ly would have had for their pet,” he said. 

Ad­dress­ing the as­pect of Ish­mael’s law­suit call­ing for the dog to be eu­thanised if the case is suc­cess­ful, the cou­ple’s lawyer Lasana Mur­ray said his clients would be strong­ly chal­leng­ing the move. 

Mur­ray sug­gest­ed that while the court had the pow­er to make such an or­der un­der the leg­is­la­tion, the cou­ple’s dog does not qual­i­fy. 

Un­der Sec­tion 19 of 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. 

In their de­fence, the cou­ple claim that one of their dogs is a Ger­man Shep­herd and the oth­er two are Ger­man Shep­herd cross­es. 

 A pre-tri­al hear­ing in the case is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 13.