If Inez Starks goes to trial in her lawsuit against Warren, Mich., police officers, the judge may have to order one of the defendants not to bark in the courtroom.

Starks, 55, is suing over a dog bite she received during an altercation with police in April 2007. The suit names 10 individual defendants -- nine human officers, plus Liberty, the canine officer who injured her right buttock, allegedly leaving her with nerve damage.

“The K9 went out of control and viciously and brutally bit Inez Stark's [sic] right buttocks cheek, as well as biting Warren Police Officer [Scott] Taylor's leg,” the complaint, filed last month in Macomb County Circuit Court, says.

Preposterous as it may seem, this is not the only case of its kind. In November 2005, a convicted marijuana dealer sued an Athens County, Ohio, sheriff's department dog for illegally searching his furniture business.

The court docket in that case shows that "Canine Andi" was served with the complaint and was represented by the same counsel as the county sheriff. The dog was still listed as a defendant when the case was voluntarily dismissed in March 2006.

Starks attorney Lawrence N. Radden of Detroit says Liberty, a German shepherd who has worked for the City of Warren since 2002, is a legitimate defendant because it is a licensed police officer. But he admits that for the most part, he included the dog in the suit “to make people aware that this dog is vicious.”

“There's something wrong with this dog,” Radden insists, noting its alleged assault on Taylor.

The suit alleges a statutory dog bite claim against only the City of Warren and Liberty's handler, Officer Randy Baird. Liberty is accused with Baird, Taylor and the other police officers of assault and battery and gross negligence.

Starks says she was bitten outside the home of her daughter where police had gone on a truancy complaint. “She got a little loud, a little angry,” Radden told the Macomb Daily. “She was concerned for her daughter, and I think the police were out of line.”

The dog bite allegedly damaged Starks's sacroiliac nerve, impairing her ability to walk. “Ms. Stark also sustained severe and permanent injury and is forced to take Vicodin and other pain medications,” the suit says.

Whether or not the case proceeds with Liberty as a defendant, it faces the severe obstacle of the city's governmental immunity from tort liability. Radden is hoping the immunity will not apply to the strict liability dog bite claim, but a Michigan appeals court ruled in Tate v. City of Grand Rapids, 671 N.W.2d 84 (2003), that such a claim is “still a tort action seeking to impose tort liability.”

Gross negligence, though not subject to the immunity shield, requires Starks to prove that the defendants' conduct was “so reckless as to demonstrate a substantial lack of concern for whether an injury results.”

By Matthew Heller
9/4/08