A woman is taking the City of North Vancouver to court, seeking to have two bylaw tickets tossed out after her dog bit a stranger.
Andrea Reagan Wong laid out her version of the events in a petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court this week.
On Feb. 26, 2021, Wong was walking her leashed dog Finna to their Victory Ship Way apartment when they encountered some residents moving out of the building and taking up most of the outdoor walkway, the petition states.
“[One woman] strode into their path and walked directly into Finna, provoking him to nip at her leg to create distance between himself and the complainant,” she wrote. “The complainant suffered a minor wound to the leg and some bruising thereafter.”
After the woman complained to the city, animal control officers issued Wong two tickets for failing to ensure that a dog does not bite a person, and failing to ensure a dog does not injure a person.
Wong disputed the tickets, triggering an adjudication process. After a hearing in September, the adjudicator upheld the tickets but noted in her reasoning that Wong “took all reasonable precautions” leading up to the incident, the petition states.
Wong highlighted the adjudicator’s comments that Finna was “reasonably under control up until the complainant was within close proximity of the dog” and that “the owners had exercised reasonable cautions.”
In her petition, Wong doesn’t dispute that Finna bit the woman, but she said she should have been entitled to the defence of due diligence – that is she should not be held liable for an incident she tried to prevent.
“The brief reasons of the adjudicator show that they believe their role to be limited to making a factual finding of whether the offence occurred, rather than to perform a legal analysis of whether a defence was applicable. This is a legal error,” Wong’s petition states.
The adjudicator was also wrong to uphold both tickets, given that they stemmed from the same single incident, Wong argued.
The City of North Vancouver has not yet filed a response to the petition.
In statement Wednesday, city staff said they have not yet been served with the legal documents and could not offer comment.
