Family to sue owner after pit bull attack
Legal action sought after no criminal charges laid in fatality
The daughter of Christiane Vadnais, the woman who was killed in a dog attack in Pointe-aux-Trembles in June, will file a lawsuit against the owner of the dog, La Presse reported Thursday.
The news story also cited a veterinarian’s report confirming that the dog was in fact a pit bull.
Vadnais’s daughter decided to sue Franklin Junior Frontal after learning he would not face criminal charges.
A lawyer’s letter has been sent to Frontal.
“We are doing it on principle, so that he will finally be held accountable,” said Lise Vadnais, the victim’s sister.
“We don’t want him to just turn the page as if nothing happened, without consequences, not even a slap on the wrist.”
She added that in their decision not to press criminal charges, police had not taken into account important elements, such as the fact the family believes the dog named Lucifer was not kept indoors during the day, and that the owner would muzzle the dog when guests came over because it had bitten two people previously.
An autopsy report conducted by the veterinary faculty of the Université de Montréal concluded the dog that killed Christiane Vadnais was a male pit bull that weighed 73 pounds and was wearing a studded collar, a muzzle around its neck and a harness around its chest at the time of the attack.
It showed no signs of infectious disease, like rabies, or of suffering from a brain tumour, reads the report, which bases its findings on analyses conducted by two veterinarian pathologists, the Quebec agriculture ministry’s animal epidemiological studies department and by Canada’s Food Inspection Agency.
Animal activists have long questioned whether the dog that killed Vadnais and spurred the city of Montreal to institute a ban against the breed was in fact a pit bull, because it had been registered as a boxer.
The Université de Montréal report was published last June, but never made public.