Say you’re a city girl who’s just moved to the country and you’re headed back home after a pleasant jog down scenic country roads. As twilight approaches you start to tire, so you decide to take a shortcut home across a verdant meadow.
You scale the low fence easy enough, but you don’t get more than a few feet before you hear this sickening plop and glance down to see what looks like a quart of paté de fois gras swallowing up one of your new cross trainers. Gross! What kind of ill-mannered rustic would leave a big mess like that in the middle of a field where anyone could step in it?
By the time you’ve finished traversing the meadow, you’ve stepped in several more of those mushy mounds and your freshly waxed and booth-tanned shins are splattered with foul-smelling muck. The person responsible for soiling your sneakers and causing you severe emotional distress is going to have to pay for it, you promise.
You were sure you had a slam-dunk lawsuit, too, until the defendant’s attorney confused you by asking tricky questions such as, “How can you expect to go tramping through a cow pasture without stepping in cow pies?”
Gloria Robinette may face similar “tricky” questions, too, when the complaint she filed last month against the Beaumont Petco is heard in Jefferson County District Court.
Robinette claims to have slipped in dog urine at Petco two years ago and wants more than $1 million in damages.
Petco offers dog training, dog grooming and dog vaccinations on the premises, as well as permitting pet owners to bring leashed animals into the store while shopping.
How did Robinette expect to go tramping through Petco without being on the alert for puddles of puppy piddle? The court will have to step in and decide this case that holds little water.