Two children -- bitten and scarred by what they describe as the neighbors' vicious pit bull -- sat down Tuesday afternoon with their parents in a law office in Dunwoody to talk with 11Alive's Jon Shirek about the worst day of their young lives 15 months ago.
It was a frightening few moments in the front yard of their duplex apartment in Lilburn, and those few moments may now impact all of Georgia case law.
The boy, Ernesto Gurrola, Jr., who was four years old, had been playing outside with other children, and had just gone inside to get a drink of water from his mother.
"And then she gave me water, then I walked out and then I saw the dog, and do like this [he raises his arm over his face].... The dog bite me, and that's it."
His sister, Yaire, who was 9, said she tried to help him.
"The dog came running toward me, and then he jumped and he bit my arm, my hand."
Their mother, Rafaela Carrillo, speaking in Spanish, said through an interpreter that she opened the door and saw the dog holding Ernesto by his shoulder and armpit, and the dog was tossing her son side to side, shaking him like a rag doll.
On Tuesday, Ernesto rolled up his sleeve and held up his arm, showing the deep scars around his shoulder and arm pit.
The parents and their children sued not only the dog's owners, who lived in the other half of the duplex, they also sued their landlords.
The family's attorneys are R. Keegan Federal, Jr. and Janet Litt, of Federal & Hasson.
"The landlord has a duty to his or her tenants," Federal said, "to be sure that the common areas that are being used by their tenants are, in fact, safe for their use."
Federal said it's a case that might set a precedent in Georgia.
Last week, Gwinnett County State Court Judge John Doran rejected a motion from the landlords' attorney to throw out the lawsuit against the landlords. Instead, Doran ruled that the parents' lawsuit against the landlords should go to a trial jury.
The landlords are Jose and Delis Aragon of Lawrenceville. They would not come to their door when 11Alive News asked to speak with them.
A woman who said she is part of the Aragon family opened the front door slightly and said, "They're actually unavailable... I will have them call you."
Their attorney, Paul L. Groth of Suwanee, did not return a message asking for comment that 11Alive News left with his paralegal.
As for the dog's owners -- a husband and wife who now live in Atlanta -- they also did not want to talk about the incident or the case.
"Okay, No. I'm fine," said Daniel Cowan as he answered, then shut, his front door.
Cowan and his wife, Sarah Esperanza Arechiga, who have no attorney but are representing themselves in the lawsuit, said in court documents that the two Gurrola children "provoked" the always-calm dog into biting them. And the children, they said, "were not badly injured."
The landlords -- the Aragons -- said in court documents that they knew nothing about any so-called vicious dog staying with their tenants, Cowan and Arechiga, and that the incident was the fault of the parents and/or the dog's owners.
But the parents said they repeatedly complained to the landlords about the dog that ended up biting their children, as well as the other pit bull that Cowan and his wife owned.
And a neighbor, Karla Neptune, said she and others also complained about the two dogs, and that she even helped the Spanish-speaking mom call Gwinnett County Animal Control to complain.
"Everyone [in the neighborhood] was worried," Neptune said. "It's not right that the kids had to go through that."
"The landlords, here, do have a responsibility in addition to the owners of the dogs, themselves," Federal said, pointing out that the Aragons' leases with their tenants specified that dogs were not allowed, yet the Aragons, he said, did not enforce that.
"The landlord has a duty to his or her tenants. These people are tenants who are paying rent, in full and on time at the beginning of every month. The landlords are benefiting financially from these people living there, and they have a duty to be sure that the common areas that are being used by their tenants are, in fact, safe for their use. And that 'safe for their use' can include not only being sure that there are no potholes that they might step into and break an ankle, but also that other tenants do not harbor, keep, own, maintain vicious animals on the property who are going to attack the other tenants."
Federal hopes that the case will "send a very loud and strong message to all those other dog owners and landlords, so that they will... protect their tenants and neighbors and children who live in proximity to these vicious animals.... Landlords are going to be held responsible for failing to keep the common areas that they rent to their tenants safe in every respect, including safe from the attacks by vicious animals owned by their tenants."
"These landlords had 10 months notice of our clients' fear of these pit bulls" from the time they rented half of the duplex, in 2010, until the incident in February, 2011, said Attorney Janet Litt. "Knowledge is one of the very significant issues.... The Gwinnett County ordinance talks about having dogs that are unrestrained, and the person who either owns the dog, possesses it, or harbors the dog will have liability for that. And there is no law in Georgia that addresses this. Not even closely. And there are other cases in other states that are now talking about the fact that 'harbor' can mean a landlord that has knowledge."
The Gurrolas decided not to pursue filing criminal charges against the landlords and the dogs' owners partly because they said they did not trust authorities to prosecute the case since, they said, Animal Control failed to help them prevent the incident.
As for why the Gurrolas didn't move out, despite their one-year lease, they said the landlords repeatedly told them they were going to make the dogs' owners get rid of the dogs.
(11Alive - May 11, 2012)
