A woman who lost a dog at a Los Angeles animal shelter has been awarded $5.4 million by a jury.
Genice Horta, 51, said the shelter or the rescue team she works for did not tell her that the dog, a Belgian Malinois named Maximus, bit the teenager and the shelter worker, sending them both to the hospital.
After six surgeries to repair bones and nerves in his right arm, Horta was left with permanent damage, according to a brief his lawyers filed in 2022.
After a 10-day trial, an LA County Superior Court judge ruled last week that the city should pay 62.5%, the rescue group was 25% responsible and Horta was responsible for 12.5% of medical expenses and pain and suffering.
It was the third multimillion-dollar settlement in recent years involving allegations that city animal shelters failed to notify potential children that a dog had bitten and seriously injured someone, as required by state law.
Horta’s case “revealed a series of serious and preventable mistakes made in warning of Maximus’ history of bites and taking and failure to control a dangerous dog,” one of his lawyers, Ivan Puchalt, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the LA City Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Agnes Sibal-von Debschitz, director of communications for LA Animal Services, said in a statement that according to the department’s policy, “employees must disclose the bite and behavior to any person who receives an animal with a history of previous bites.”
The policy was enacted last November in response to a $3.25-million settlement reached by the city with Kristin Wright, who was severely injured by a pit bull she took from a South LA shelter. Wright said the shelter did not inform her that the dog had bitten the former owner’s mother in the face.
The rescue group, the HIT Living Foundation, did not respond to a request for comment.
HIT Living Foundation hired Horta to drive Maximus from the East Valley Animal Shelter to Arizona. He had no experience with shelter dogs, according to city attorneys.
On Sept. 23, 2020, after a shelter worker told Horta that Maximus was “anxious,” she gave the dog a treatment containing trazodone, a common anti-anxiety medication for dogs, according to an amended complaint by Horta’s attorneys.
Maximus took the medicine, then bent down and held onto Horta’s right hand and arm. A mysterious video of the attack was played in court during the trial.
Horta alleges that Maximus’ employee in his car negligently failed to control him and never told him that the dog could be dangerous. During the attack, the worker was holding a metal pole and a rope tied around Maximus’ neck.
The employee, Jose Humildad, testified that he told Horta not to approach Maximus with the medicine.
Maximus’ former owners surrendered him to the shelter after biting their 15-year-old daughter on the foot, leaving deep puncture wounds and requiring hospital treatment, according to a statement from Horta’s lawyers, and a few weeks later, Maximus bit a shelter worker who went to the emergency room for a severe bite to her stomach.
Horta said she was never told about the attack, making Maximus ineligible for public adoption, and was placed on the city’s New Hope list, which is accessible to registered nonprofit rescues.
Shelter staff wrote that Maximus was “severely biting and snapping at people passing through the enclosure,” according to a statement from Horta’s attorneys. Another employee wrote “EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION!!!”
Horta’s lawyers argued that Maximus was so dangerous that he should be killed.
The city pushed back on that explanation.
Animal shelters are not “death row in Mississippi at midnight,” Deputy City Atty. Joshua Quinones said in his closing argument Thursday afternoon. “This is a rescue mission.”
Quinones also revealed that Maximus had already been sold to the HIT Living Foundation when he was bitten by Horta.
Trying to find Maximus a home, animal rescuers posted repeatedly on Instagram days before the 1-year-old dog bit Horta, describing him as “a beautiful misunderstood puppy” and a “young nuisance” who is in danger of being deported.
The post said Maximus has a history of bites but did not provide details.
