Dogowners can sue for emotional distress, judge rules

By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — The owners of a dog shot and seriously wounded by a Corrections Department investigator can sue the state for emotional distress and mental anguish damages under federal civil rights law, a judge has ruled. U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain rejected the state’s argument that the owners, Erica Moreno and Katti Putman, would be entitled only to economic damages if they prove that the investigator acted unconstitutionally. The investigator, Ronald Hughes, several state troopers and a Flint police officer on a multiagency team went to the wrong house in Flint while searching for a fugitive in June 2014, according to court documents. They had an arrest warrant for the fugitive. Hughes mistakenly went into the backyard of the fugitive’s next-door neighbors, where he saw 58-pound Clohe, a 15-year-old pit bull mix, coming out the door and shot her in the face, the decision said.