Judge: Couple unable to sue for emotional distress after delivery driver kills dog
When he approached his wife with their lifeless dog, Lily, in his arms, Neil Brisson made a sound like nothing she had heard before.
Meg Brisson described it as a “cryscream” of astonished
loss.
Neil and Meg Brisson say the violent death of their beloved Shih Tzu mix due to a reckless delivery van driver caused the family real grief and emotional distress, despite a state judge’s recent ruling that a dog in Connecticut is only considered property.
“She wasn’t property; she was family,” Meg Brisson said in an interview last week. “She was a child.”
The Ridgefield couple filed a lawsuit last year against a Trumbull company doing business as Amazon Delivery, seeking compensation for their loss and the emotional distress of Lily’s death on April 9, 2021. The defendants, however, asked the state Superior Court in Bridgeport to strike all claims of emotional distress because Connecticut law considers a dog “chattel” and owners’ relationships with their pets less than a familial bond.
Judge Charles Reed agreed, ruling in January that because state law “unambiguously defines a dog as personal property,” recoverable damages for its injury or death are limited. The Brissons say they are considering an appeal.
The couple bought Lily in 2011. They had a place in Delray Beach, Fla., but missed their two dogs at home in Connecticut, Meg Brisson said. So they went into a boutique pet store for “a puppy fix.” The store allowed people to hold and play with the dogs, but Brisson said she and her husband had no intention of buying one.
With her long, black eyelashes, however, 2month-old Lily captured their hearts, the Brissons said. They bought the Shih Tzu-Bichon Frise for $800 and took her back to Ridgefield, where Lily became fast friends with the family’s other small dogs, Chino the Havanese and Furgus the Cavapoo.
“They were a family within our family,” Meg Brisson said.
Lily was known as “the lover,” she said, a sweet pooch with no aggression, content in a lap or out within the limits of an invisible fence on the 2.7acre property, “talking” to other dogs in the neighborhood and basking in the sun.
The Brissons — Neil, 64, who runs the syndicated loan and trading desk for U.S. Bank in New York City, and Meg, 61, an athome mom — have four children, and Lily was always present for family gatherings and photo opportunities.
“There isn’t a family photograph where you don’t see at least an ear or a tail, you know, part of a dog,” Meg Brisson said.
On April 9, 2021, a delivery van driver backed up the driveway and Neil went out to get a package. The driver looked like he was afraid of dogs, even though Brisson said he told him that the worst his dogs would do was “lick him to death.”
Brisson had returned to the house when he saw only two of the family’s three dogs were with him and went back out. Lily somehow had gotten caught under the van near the top of the driveway and was dragged and crushed. The driver, who was not named in the suit, never stopped, not even tapping the brakes, according to the complaint.
“Mr. Brisson was forced to scrape Lily and her exposed innards off of the driveway, gather her remains, and bring her with only her head exposed to his wife ... so that she could say goodbye to her faithful and loving companion,” the lawsuit stated.
Neil Brisson said Thursday that Lily blinked once after he found her, then her eyes went dull. Brisson believes the driver likely realized he struck the 20pound dog, but failed to stop and admit it.
The Brissons suffered “significant emotional distress as a result of the defendants’ conduct, including but not limited to, grief, stress, anxiety, mental and emotional anguish, sleeplessness, upset and anger, all of which were severe enough that they could result in illness or bodily harm,” the suit said.
The defendants’ attorney, Ephraim J. Fink, countered that the couple failed to control and restrain their dog, court documents show. On their emotional distress claim, Fink wrote in a memo to the court, “Nobody likes to think of our lovable dogs this way, but Connecticut still categorizes them, legally speaking, as no different than a toothbrush, a painting hanging on a wall or a bag of golf clubs in the garage — personal property, nothing more.”
“Of course, the plaintiffs had a close relationship with their pet, and the dog’s passing is most unfortunate and tragic,” he wrote in the court filing. “However, the plaintiffs have no real known established standard to support a legal claim for emotional distress damages under Connecticut law.”
Some states, including Tennessee, Illinois and New York, allow for damages beyond just economic loss when a pet is killed or injured, according to the Animal Leage Defense Fund.
However, even in arguably more horrific cases, Connecticut courts have maintained that pets are considered property. Fink cited a case in which a man complained of emotional distress after his exwife purposely locked his dog in a garage without food or water, leading to a slow death from starvation and dehydration. The court in that case found that state law did not recognize an emotional distress claim for a pet.
Meg Brisson called such reasoning “insulting” to her family and all families with beloved pets.
“As long as animals aren’t considered important enough to be of value,” she said, “nothing’s going to change.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Sean Caruthers said the Brissons will wait for a final decision on the case before deciding whether to appeal. There is support in case law, Caruthers said, for a claim of “bystander emotional distress” due to Neil Brisson seeing his dog die in front of him.