I enjoy doing legal research about
service dogs—partly because it's a subject near and dear to
my heart, and partly just because I find the gyrations of our legal
system to be fascinating.
The other day, I found this great
case
on FindLaw that reassured me that common sense has not yet been
completely bred out of the human race. The case was about a service
dog named Jazz that yipped during the intermission (NB:
not during the performance) of a concert.
In looking at the individual merits of this case, the court found
that:
[A business] may not exclude a service animal who has
made a noise on a previous occasion, even if such behavior is
disruptive, if the noise was made and intended to serve as means of
communication for the benefit of the disabled owner or if the
behavior would otherwise be acceptable...if engaged by
humans.
The court also provided this noteworthy insight:
Clearly, humans generally do not bark like dogs and
dogs generally do not cough like humans. But that does not render
the ordered modification [to the Center's policies] unreasonable.
The order requires a general comparison of disruptiveness, and this
does not seem an especially difficult task. For instance, the
acceptability of a given outburst—human or animal—can
be gauged by patrons' responses. In this case, no patron complained
on the two occasions that Jazz made noise in the Center; it seems
clear that Jazz's behavior was not disruptive.
In short, according to the 9th Circuit, you can still be ejected if
your SD is needlessly disruptive or behaving inappropriately, but a
dog behaving like a dog cannot be considered
inherently
disruptive. If a dog yelps because someone steps on its tail, or
makes an alerting noise, the context must be taken into
account.
Of course, this decision doesn't absolve SD handlers of the
responsibility to maintain quiet and well-behaved dogs, but it does
mean that well-trained dogs aren't expected to be robots,
either.
As a final note, I'm sure many will worry that some pet owner or
uncaring SD handler will ruin this landmark decision by abusing
common courtesy and good sense, using this ruling as justification
for letting Cujo run amok. However, I feel certain that legal
opinions like this display a lot of compassion and common sense; I
simply won't believe that such a nuanced understanding of
individual cases can be so easily upset by a few folks from the
fringe.
Sometimes, the system really
does work.