Soap star sues for $5M over dog bite on set
‘Incident’ took place during film shoot in Ottawa
OTTAWA • An Emmy awardwinning American actress has launched a $ 5- million lawsuit for the trauma she says she suffered after a dog bit her in the face during a love scene on an Ottawa movie set.
Adrienne Frantz, 39, a celebrated U. S. soap opera star, was suddenly attacked by the dog as she filmed a scene with Canadian actor John Cor on the set of the movie, The Perfect Girlfriend, in November, 2014.
In an interview Tuesday, Frantz’s Vancouver- based lawyer, Robyn Wishart, described the allegation at the heart of the lawsuit: “She was filming the love scene and was in a passionate embrace with the male lead when the dog ran up the stairs and knocked the male lead off of Ms. Frantz and then bit her in the face.”
The dog, a Boston terrier named Bentley, had a role in the film but was not supposed to play any part in the scene, Wishart said.
At the time of the i ncident, Frantz was three months pregnant, she said, and ultimately decided to forgo a tetanus shot in order to protect her unborn baby.
Frantz suffered a miscarriage less than two weeks after the dog bite, Wishart said, and endured other physical and emotional fallout, inc l uding post- traumatic stress, anxiety, depression and Graves’ disease, a thyroid- related condition that can sometimes be triggered by stressful events.
Frantz’s suit contends that the Ontario- based film production company, NB Thrilling Films 4 Inc., was negligent in its handling of the dog, Bentley.
Wishart said that Bentley was not a trained animal actor, but rather a family pet owned by the film’s Ottawabased make-up artist.
In a statement of defence, the production company, NB Films, concedes that a dog “incident” took place, but it maintains it did not result in any serious or permanent injuries to Frantz.
Pasquale Santini, a lawyer for the production company, said in an affidavit that he has recent pictures of Frantz on the internet that show she has “no scarring or skin imperfections of any kind” on her right cheek.
What’s more, Santini contends, Frantz “ought to have known that dogs can be unpredictable and that there was a risk associated with such unpredictability.” By agreeing to act in a film with a dog, he argues, she accepted those risks.
The movie, released in July, 2016, was filmed in Ottawa for the Lifetime cable TV channel.
In the movie, Matthews adopts a dog, Bentley, in an effort to soften her image and appeal to Brandon Moore, the handsome young executive played by Cor.
Frantz rose to fame in the late 1990s on the daytime soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful.
In 2001, she won the Daytime Emmy award in the outstanding young actress category for her portrayal of Amber Moore. She received two other Daytime Emmy award nominations, and later starred in The Young and the Restless.