Dog Blamed in $2.6-Million Injury Award

A witness said Abby had a long, bushy tail and urinated on a nearby fire hydrant. Her owner, another witness said, was a “fat, gray-haired balding man.”

Stanley Zeldin produced pictures showing that Abby has a stubby tail, barely four inches long. Being a female, he argued, she could hardly have been seen lifting her leg at a hydrant.

Zeldin, a robust man with a full head of reddish-blond hair, could be described as neither fat nor bald nor gray-haired.

A Superior Court judge found Thursday, however, that it was Zeldin’s dog that ran into the path of a pickup truck three years ago, causing the driver to swerve and throwing two passengers into the street, seriously injuring them.

The Diamond Bar dental supply salesman was tentatively ordered to pay $2.6 million in damages to the two injured men, one of whom was in a coma for five months, in what attorneys said is one of the largest verdicts ever assessed against the owner of a wanton dog.

“It offends my sensitivities that a dog owner could be held responsible for this kind of damage, when we maintain there’s a substantial question as to whether it was the dog at all, and more substantial question as to what caused the accident,” said one of Zeldin’s attorneys, Mark Kane.

The lawyer for the two Walnut Unified School District employees who were thrown from the back of a district pickup truck said, however, that Judge Robert Fainer’s tentative decision places blame where it belongs--on the shoulders of a dog owner who violated Los Angeles County’s leash law, regardless of the owner’s ability to pay.

“Suppose the dog owner were Nelson Rockefeller. Is that the issue, who the owner of the dog is, or is it the fact that the owner was negligent and caused somebody to be seriously injured?” asked attorney David Greenberg. “We’ve got to look at these people who end up crippled and ruined for the rest of their lives.”

Breakfast Break

Larry Suarez, 32, and Jose Manly, 65, were returning to work on Oct. 8, 1983, from a breakfast break with two other school district employees, riding in the back of the pickup because there was no room in the cab.

Suarez, who was riding on the top of a tool box, underwent five major operations, including brain surgery, and suffered a loss of hearing, dizziness and headaches. He will be able to return to work, although not the heavy work he did before the incident.

Manly had multiple brain injuries and was in a coma for five months; he is permanently disabled, with nearly all of his senses impaired.

Fainer found that both men were guilty of some degree of negligence because they were riding in the back of the truck. Because they were doing so in the course of their jobs, however, he found that their negligence was minimal: 20% in Suarez’s case, 5% in Manly’s.

The school district, in frequently allowing its employees to ride in pickup beds, was also negligent to some degree, Fainer found, but because school districts can be held liable by their employees only for workers’ compensation benefits, only the amount of those benefits paid by the district was subtracted from the final damage award.

‘We Take Everything’

The net amount of damages assessed against Zeldin will be offset by his $100,000 homeowner’s policy. Beyond that, however, he is personally responsible for payment, attorneys said. “He’ll end up going bankrupt, I assume, after we take everything he’s got,” Greenberg said.

The case is “unusual,” Greenberg said. “Usually in these situations, you never find the dog again, or you never find out who owned it. Here, there were a bunch of witnesses that identified the dog, and the guy came out to the scene and the dog was hanging around him.”

Aside from the plaintiffs’ role in contributing to their own injuries, the key issue in the non-jury trial was the identity of the dog.

“There were two witnesses that identified the dog, but both of the witnesses described characteristics of the dog that were unlike the dog that was owned by Mr. Zeldin,” Kane said.

There was confusion over whether the dog was “shepherd-like,” as Abby is, or “collie-like,” as one witness described the offending dog’s tail.

Questions were raised about whether Abby, who was in Zeldin’s fenced yard and could only have exited through a garage door during during the few minutes it was open, would have had the opportunity to run into the street.

The case occasionally took on comic overtones, but the result, Kane said, is tragic for all involved.

Zeldin, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, “is not a wealthy man,” Kane said. “He sells dental supplies. I know he is recently married. And I know he loves his dog.”