- November 6, 2024
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The 2015 hearing that led county commissioners to assign a dangerous dog designation to a Labrador retriever that bit a local boy on the face was conducted in a manner that violated the dog owners' rights, according to Circuit Judge Scott DuPont.
DuPont quashed the county’s ruling that the dog should be declared dangerous.
County Attorney Al Hadeed said the judge’s order showed a misunderstanding of the county’s process. That could have perhaps been averted, Hadeed said, if oral arguments were held before the judge before he issued his ruling. Instead, DuPont ruled based on case documents.
Hadeed said he had been “somewhat surprised” that no hearing was held in which the lawyers could present arguments to the judge. The county is still reviewing its options, Hadeed said, but the judge’s ruling might be “a serious enough misunderstanding that we’re going to have to have a review by a higher court.”
An appeal by the county would land the case in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The dog, named Bacchus, was 2 years old in July 2015 when he bit the 8-year-old victim, Rickey Westfall. Rickey’s injuries required 44 stitches.
What happened before the bite was disputed: Bacchus’ owners said Rickey had come into the house uninvited — and that he’d done so before and been warned not to continue — while Rickey’s family said the Sweatts’ son, who was a friend of Rickey, had invited him in.
How Rickey entered mattered to Bacchus’ case, because if the boy had come in uninvited, he would have been trespassing, and a dog that bites someone who’s on its property unlawfully isn’t supposed to be designated as dangerous. If Rickey had come into the house with an invitation and been attacked by Bacchus, however, that would be grounds to declare the dog dangerous.
The county hearing officer who first heard the case before it made its way to the County Commission found that Rickey had entered the home uninvited, and that the dog should therefore not be classified as dangerous.
The County Commission reversed that decision and had Bacchus declared dangerous. In doing so, it held a hearing to determine two things: whether the findings of the hearing officer’s recommended order were supported by “competent substantial evidence,” and whether the hearing officer applied the correct law.
It found that there was not competent substantial evidence to support the assertion that Rickey was on the property unlawfully.
“The evidence overwhelmingly shows that RW was just a young boy visiting his friend’s house to play on the July 4 weekend,” the commission’s adjudicatory order states. “RW was a fried of RS who frequently visited RS’s home on many occasions and most recently, often unannounced. Under the circumstances of this case, the Board by majority vote finds that RW had implied consent to enter the house.”
DuPont wrote in his order and opinion that the county had erred in allowing the County Commission to hear arguments by Rickey’s family’s attorney, because the Westfall family was not a party to the proceedings, and the county ordinance states that parties to the proceedings are to be given time to present arguments.
The parties in the case, DuPont wrote, were the Sweatts and the county. DuPont’s order suggested that Hadeed, as county attorney, should have made an argument opposing or supporting the recommended order, and that the fact that the attorney for the Westfall family had been allowed to argue violated the Sweatts’ due process rights.
Hadeed said his role in the process as county attorney was not to make an argument either way, but to advise the County Commission on its role in making a determination.
The judge’s interpretation of the ordinance as barring argument by the Westfall’s attorney, Hadeed said, appeared to come from the fact that county ordinance does not specifically state that the injured person can be a party to the proceeding.
“But the ordinance is not written in a vacuum,” Hadeed said. Common law, he said, gives parties with an interest in a controversy a right to participate in the proceedings.
He suggested an analogy: A developer wants to put in a high-rise, and is opposed by a neighbor whose view would be blocked by the new building. If the issue came before the County Commission for a quasi-judicial hearing, the neighbor would be given the chance to speak.
DuPont also wrote that the board, by rejecting part of the hearing officer’s order that found that Rickey was in the house unlawfully but not rejecting the hearing officer’s assessment that the dog had caused severe injury, had dealt with the issue “piecemeal.”
“The Court finds that the Board exceeded its authority by its piecemeal treatment of the Recommended Order — rejecting part and accepting part of the order,” he wrote. “The Ordinance at issue clearly states that the Board ‘shall vote to either uphold or reject the recommended order.’”
Hadeed said the finding that Rickey was in the house unlawfully “was an ultimate point of the (hearing officer’s) findings.” Part of the commission’s job, he said, was to assess whether the hearing officer had applied the correct law, and it found that, by classifying an 8-year-old as a trespasser, he had not.
DuPont is currently being investigated by the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, which has found probable cause to initiate proceedings against DuPont on a dozen charges related both to his conduct on the campaign trail and his conduct in the courtroom. Some of those charges involve ruling without affording lawyers for one or more parties in a case the opportunity to make an argument.
