The video shows an extract of a judge Judy case. The sound is hard to hear. I have heard it several times and the scenario is as follows:
https://youtu.be/vhGSavj5UGU
The claimant was walking her dog on a lead in what she described as the front yard but I believe this to be a public area or an area used by people living in a condominium. She was walking next to some garages. Her dog, inquisitively, sniffed in the area of some bushes. In those bushes was a tabby cat which the claimant says belongs to the defendant.
The cat attacked the dog, scratching the dog’s eye which required $4000 of veterinary treatment at the end of which the dog lost her eye. The claimant/plaintiff was looking for a court judgement that she be reimbursed for four thousand dollars. She got her award – judge Judy awarded $4000 to the claimant to be paid by the defendant.
The defendant said that the cat was not his. Judge Judy found that the cat was his and that he should have had his cat on a lead or kept his cat indoors and because his cat had damaged this woman’s dog he had to pay her compensation due to his irresponsibility.
I find judge Judy’s judgement incorrect the following reasons:
Firstly, she makes an all-encompassing statement that this man’s cat should have been on a lead or very closely supervised. However, she made no reference to any state or local laws which requires that a cat be on a lead. The fact that she made no reference to any such law indicates to me that it does not exist in that area (or, as Sandy in a comment states, that it is accepted that outdoor cats are supervised). It has to be said, in the USA, today, there are many laws which are gradually encroaching upon the historically free-roaming nature of the domestic cat.
It must be an omission by the judge that she made no attempt to modify her judgement on the basis that there is no law (ordinance) regarding cats being on leashes or kept indoors, or she appears to make no reference to any leash-law should it exist, in her judgment. That’s the first problem as I see it. Incidentally, the judge seems to have taken the view that cats are like dogs and can put on a lead without any problems. Cats do not like leads and they won’t follow their “owner” like a dog.
The second problem is that the dog had approached the cat (as I understand it), albeit that both the dog owner and the dog were unaware of the cat’s presence as the cat was in bushes. However, the cat would have been intimidated and defensively aggressive. The cat’s behaviour was defensive and reactive.
Judge Judy likens the action of this cat to attacking prey, which is extraordinary. She discusses the behaviour of cats attacking birds with the defendant and then likens that to what the cat did to the dog. This is completely incorrect because cats do not willy-nilly attack dogs as prey. Therefore judge Judy was wrong again.
I would judge this incident as “an act of nature”. In effect it was an accident (from a human standpoint), the coming together of two species of animal, inadvertently, without any malice or bad behaviour on the part of either the claimant or the defendant.
Therefore, there should have been no award of compensation. It was just bad luck. If on the other hand judge Judy wished to award some compensation to the woman she should have taken into account the fact that the dog, albeit perhaps inadvertently, was the aggressor and therefore there was an element of contributory negligence or misbehaviour from the dog’s owner. This should reduce the award to about half of what it is.
There is one last issue: if this occurred in a private area there may be rules on cats entering private areas and losing their ‘rights’.
Those are my thoughts on this at this stage. Do you have any? It is a case which goes to the heart of the indoor/outdoor cat debate and whether free-roaming cats are acceptable nowadays.
Judge Judy is an American television show. She is a real judge but her judgements on the show are not binding in the usual way but via a contract between the parties.
That was a neat solution. Lateral thinking I think you call it. Perhaps the fact that Judge Judy’s court is a television studio rather than a real court and therefore there are hardly ever witnesses, the judge has to decide between two totally conflicting accounts and therefore has to make bold broadbrush decisions which seem crude by the standards of real hearings.
To be fair to JJ, I’m sure she encounters a lot of idiots and has seen her fair share of bare faced liars. I guess she sometimes goes with her gut feeling as to who is telling the truth.
In the UK, you need physical evidence or an independent witness to back up an accusation of crime. Many years ago we had the neighbour from hell. I won’t bore you with the very, lengthy list of his crimes against us, but the police would not get involved because we didn’t have a witness. The situation was only resolved when I made a complaint to the Race Relations board – my partner was French (lol). That got things moving and within an hour a local detective called me to say they could potentially prosecute him under stalker legislation.
Unfortunately, she probably would. They pull the case from court and agree to let her settle it. She seems to choose who she feels is telling the truth and goes from there. Sometimes they are both liars and she tells them to settle it between themselves. She acts as if she is dealing with children, not adults.
I know the laws vary greatly across the USA and I appreciate that Judge Judy may not feel it pertinent to specify which sections of legislation dictate her rulings.
However, if this man lives in an area where local laws dictate that cats should not be outside unless under the “control” of their owner, then why was there no mention from the plaintiff (or JJ) about him being fined/getting into trouble with the local authorities? Surely that would have helped support the plaintiff’s case against him?
I’m sorry for the dog, but I still maintain that without independent witnesses to corroborate the suspect and the plaintiff’s version of events, JJ is taking one person’s word over another’s. Would she give the same ruling if I said I saw someone vandalise my car, but had no witnesses? Perhaps the repair bill from the garage would be sufficient evidence to prove my case 😉
She and her husband are dog people. I heard here say it once before. There was a photo of all four of them in People Magazine many years ago.
We have laws that require owners to control their animals. There was a huge battle. One side was complaining that animals were roaming free on their property. The other that their animals were being killed by their neighbors. A solution had to be come up with. Owner control of animal was the outcome. I used to read the afternoon paper while I folded them for my route as a pre-teen. It was debated for quite sometime here in Arizona. As a cat lover, I was naturally interested.