Cornejo v. Allen

Facts

In February 2019, Allen entered the backyard of his next-door neighbor, Cornejo. Allen brought his newly adopted dog over as well, which Cornejo had never interacted with before. The dog was not on a leash and ended up jumping on Cornejo, scratching his hand. Shortly after this, the dog attacked and bit Cornejo.

The next day, Cornejo was outside in his yard. Allen’s dog saw him and ran straight at him. As he ran from the dog, Cornejo slipped and fell onto his concrete driveway, injuring his shoulder. The dog returned to Allen’s yard without making any physical contact with Cornejo.

Cornejo filed suit, bringing claims for strict liability and negligence against Allen. Allen moved for summary judgment on both claims. The trial court granted Allen’s motion, holding strict liability is not applicable to acts of dogs and that there was not any evidence that Allen had knowledge of the dog’s vicious propensity. Cornejo appealed.

Issues & Holdings

The issues in this case were:

1. Was the trial court correct in granting summary judgment to Allen for strict liability after his dog charged Cornejo?
2. Was the trial court correct in granting summary judgment to Allen for negligence after his dog charged Cornejo?

The court held that the trial court was correct in granting summary judgment on the strict liability claim, but it held it erroneously granted summary judgment on the negligence claim.

Reasoning

The Court briefly explained its decision to uphold the trial court’s granting of summary judgment regarding strict liability.

First, Cornejo gave no argument in his brief as to why strict liability should. Therefore, the claim was considered abandoned. See Georgia Court of Appeals Rule 25 (d)(1). Furthermore, the Court explained that Georgia does not impose strict liability on dog owners for injuries caused by their dogs. See Cowan v. Carillo, 331 Ga. App. 387 (2015).

The Court then considered the trial court’s granting of summary judgment regarding negligence. Allen’s argument hinged upon his lack of knowledge that his dog was vicious. He did not argue that the dog itself was not vicious. Georgia’s code only imposes liability on dog owners when a plaintiff can prove that the owner had knowledge of the dog’s vicious propensity. O.C.G.A. § 51-2-7; Torrance v. Brennan, 209 Ga. App. 65 (1993).

The Court reasoned that, for a genuine issue of fact to exist, Allen must have had reason to know of the dog’s propensity to do harm which it did inflict. Steagald v. Eason, 300 Ga. 717 (1993); Weinstein v. Holmes, 344 Ga. App. 391 (2018). Allen argued that the two instances that occurred leading up to this case (Libei jumping on, scratching, and biting Cornejo one evening and then charging him the next day) were so unalike that a jury would not be able to infer that Allen had knowledge that would make him liable for the injuries Cornejo sustained when he fell in his driveway.

The Court reasoned that a jury may distinguish between the two incidents and Allen from liability. But the facts were not clear enough that such a conclusion would be reached as a matter of law. More specifically, a jury may see both instances as an “attack” on Cornejo, which would make Allen liable after the first incident occurred. The Court noted that the fact that Cornejo was not actually injured by the dog, but injured when trying to run from the dog, did not matter for the purposes of liability. See Green v. Wilson, 333 Ga. App. 631 (2015).

Conclusion

Cornejo is a good example of how important the specific facts are in a dog bite case. The required knowledge does not have to come from identical incidents. If anything shows a dog has had aggressive tendencies in the past, you can almost guarantee that summary judgment will not be appropriate.

Additionally, this case is a good reminder about needing to raise arguments you wish to preserve. While not explored in depth in this summary, there were a few issues that the Court touched on that had been deemed “abandoned” because there were no supporting arguments or sources. Construct appeals intentionally and do not include arguments that you can’t back up, as the Court will not construct its own support when evaluating them.

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Citation: Cornejo v. Allen, 367 Ga.App. 618 (2023)