Colorado Business Litigation Lawyer Blog

I previously reported about a case in the Lafayette, Colorado Municipal Court in which the owners of a wiener dog named “Spork” were charged with keeping a vicious dog which had bitten a veterinary technician on the face during a dental procedure. I promised I would follow-up on the story when additional facts became available.

In March 2010, a plea agreement was reached under which the charge against Spork’s owners will be dismissed if Spork keeps his nose clean-- so to speak-- for a 6-month period. Needless to say, the tiny dog’s owners are greatly relieved that, at least for six months, Spork does not face the possible penalty of euthanasia.

The injured veterinary tech, who has had one surgery and faces at least one more, says it was never her desire that Spork be put down. Her motivating factor in seeing that charges were filed initially was her hope that the dog would not bite anyone in the future.

As a small digression from thought-provoking and sometimes informative legal topics, I noticed with interest a Denver, Colorado KWGN Channel 2 piece about a serious police matter in Ohio.

It seems that an Alliance police officer began following a motorist he believed to be intoxicated. The officer had previously been told by a clerk at a convenience store that an intoxicated person had just left the store. The officer observed that the motorist failed to signal for a turn and attempted to stop the vehicle. The driver then led police on a 100- mph chase. The chase was discontinued after the officer visually identified the driver and felt that the chase was becoming too dangerous.

The same car was later spotted by a Brimfield Township officer, who followed the vehicle into a motel. At that point recollections diverged. The police say that the driver began resisting arrest; thus, when Alliance officers came upon the scene, they hauled out their trusty taser and fired, hitting the motorist with one probe. Unfortunately, the other probe hit one of the officers in the hand, administering a five second burst of electricity to the officer. A police cruiser dash camera shows both the motorist and the officer writhing on the ground. For the video, click here.

The motorist says he was not resisting arrest and that the officer who shot the taser--and not the motorist-- was responsible for hitting the fellow officer.

As an aside, the motorist’s dog bit two of the officers, further adding insult to injury.

Moral: Do not drive drunk; do not tase your bro.

Judge Stephen Victor Wilson, U.S. District Judge in the Central District of California, on April 20, 2010, dismissed a complaint filed by persons who claim they were defrauded by Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme.

The investors’ complaint alleges that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) woefully failed to discover Madoff’s scheme long before Madoff confessed that he was running a pyramid scheme and had defrauded investors of amounts totaling billions of dollars.

Readers will recall that I previously wrote about the SECs inaction, incompetence and inexperience in its failure to discover Madoff’s illegal investment scheme. To refresh your recollection on the details of those articles click here and here.

Judge Wilson, in effect, says that the SECs manner of investigation, even assuming “sheer incompetence,” was permissible and protected, given that its actions and failure to act were protected by the “discretionary exception” to the Federal Tort Claims Act. In other words, if the statutes creating and controlling the SEC require discretionary (may act) as opposed to mandatory (must act) powers, those acts or failure to act do not expose the SEC to any liability.

It is expected that the decision will be appealed by the plaintiffs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District.

I will follow this case in the event of an appeal.

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