Long v. City of Exeter et al.

Dog Attack

San Luis Obispo

Superior Court Judge Barry T. Labarbera

Plaintiffs Attorney: Cheong & Denove, John F. Denove; Frederick Law Firm, Jacqueline V. Frederick; Callahan Thompson Sherman & Caudill, Llp, Sunny Hawks

Defense Attorneys: Overstreet & Associates, Chester E. Walls (Now With Litigation Engineered)

John F. Denove

When a retired police dog escaped a backyard in Grover Beach in 2016, he attacked and mauled an 86-year-old neighborhood resident, Betty Long. Her neighbor David Fear, 64, came to her rescue to help fend off the attack, but he died three days later from excessive blood loss.

In July, a San Luis Obispo County jury awarded $13.8 million to Long and $7 million to the children of David Fear. Long et al. v. City of Exeter et al., 17CV-0529 (San Luis Obispo County Sup. Ct., filed Feb. 28, 2018).

The panel concluded the Exeter Police Department in Tulare County was negligent in failing to train Officer Alex Geiger on how to kennel and properly secure the retired police dog.

"The significance is that I think it tells public entity defendants that they shouldn't get too smug," said plaintiffs' attorney John F. Denove of Cheong & Denove.

"The city or any governmental agency like this has certain immunity from being sued ... but there is no immunity for failure to warn," he said. "There are a number of appellate cases that talk about if you fail to warn someone of a known danger, then immunity does not attach."

"Geiger was never told [by the Exeter Police Department] that the training that these dogs undergo will permanently change their brain," Denove continued, "and that they can never be trusted to be a pet, and that the animal has to be kept locked in a kennel at all times except in the immediate presence of the handler."

Defense attorney Chester E. Walls of Overstreet and Associates counters that Geiger had a separate enclosure for the dog in the backyard.

"The issue that went to the jury ... was whether it was negligence for the city, specifically its chief of police, not to advise the handler [Geiger] that he was purchasing a canine that had been trained to do a number of different things, when in fact, the handler was the one that trained the dog to do those things."

Geiger was a former K-9 officer for the Exeter Police Department, and he bought the Belgian Malinois named Neo before joining the Grover Beach police force.

Neo was euthanized after the attack, and Geiger was acquitted by a jury in a criminal trial for involuntary manslaughter in 2019.

The civil case is currently pending appeal at the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court.

- Kathryn Stelmach Artuso