Not sure how you can jump to that conclusion. A driver can probably assume that a dog being walked by a person, even near the road, will be controlled appropriately by the walker.

The only time a driver could not reasonably assume this is where the dog is too large to be controllable by the person (kid or small adult) who is walking it.

Without any facts, we can't presume the driver is at fault. Also, we have no way of finding out who that person is, except through Wag. So it's sort of pointless to pin our hopes on them.

Lastly, if the driver really were clearly at fault, it would be more likely that the Wag walker would have provided information to this effect. The fact that he/she has not is more consistent with it being the walker's fault.

But here the problem here isn't that the dog died, it's how Wag has handled the problem afterwards, and how their (poor) communication suggests that they didn't really do their due diligence in vetting the walkers.

EDIT: a similar thing happened in my country (the Netherlands) where an Uber driver hit (and killed) a young woman after driving around in circles (a technique used to get more clients apparently, instead of parking somewhere), and Uber immediately pulled the "he is not an Uber employee and he wasn't with an Uber customer when it happened, so it's not our fault card". which resulted in public outrage[1]. They could have just send some flowers to the family, now they got a PR crisis instead.

[1]: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/een-uber-chauff...

Someone explained it to me as when an American says "sorry" they mean "I'm sorry I did a bad thing to you" and when a Brit says sorry they mean "I'm sorry a bad thing happened to you". Which also explains the not uncommon American response to "sorry" of "Why? It wasn't your fault".

If something that's out of my control happens to someone I might say sorry and mean "I'm sorry a bad thing happened to you".

I'm British and find that sometimes I think similarly to another person who is British, and at other times I think differently to another person who is British. It's wild.

Pets are treated as simple property by US law and the liability is strictly limited to the cost of replacement. There has never been a civil judgement in the US beyond that. There are CRIMINAL issues involving treatment of animals, but none of those are applicable here.

This is pure incompetence by WAG's legal and customer-service departments.

Likewise when you take money for a service you are accountable for not letting their dog run into the road which is usually pretty easy for an animal on a leash.

What did wag do wrong that we know?

The walker wasn't the person on the profile. They are withholding information regarding the incident. They tried to force the victim to agree to be legally silenced in order to pay for direct costs incurred.

This is 1000 times worse than paying nothing.

Obviously we don’t know in this instance but in most cases fault goes to the driver if the dog is on leash, and given that this dog did not belong to the owner I’d be surprised if it was off leash. It might have been a flexilead in which case the outcome might be different depending on jurisdiction and circumstance but in any case the owners are going to have a better time going after drivers.

Neither party in this case involved the authorities or contacted any of the affected parties. The walker was already doing something they might not want Wag knowing about (having a third party walk the dog). I don’t think you can make any conclusions there so I’ll stick with my “probably”.

When I imagine a pet getting killed by a car I image it becomes free and running out in front of a car, not a car breaking a law and encroaching on the pets leash space. Perhaps there are some counter-intuitive stats on this I'm not aware of :)

Further, there are a LOT of places where a person on a sidewalk would be within a leash length of a car legally driving 30+ mph.

As it stands, it sounds like they have not provided enough details to identify the walker, let alone investigate the driver (if there even was one). So I’d say Wag is just as culpable as a maybe-existing-driver.

It's certainly possible that the driver was at fault if they were speeding or driving recklessly, but like another commenter mentioned I don't think we know enough to say.

Still a limited and insignificant amount as far as compensations go (which could reach tens of millions in other cases), which is the parent's point.

My understand of civil liability would be whom ever caused the harm is responsible for the actual damages done, not simply some raw actuarial table, so if I have vet bills, actual hard costs, then whom ever caused those costs would be responsible for them.

I have a hard time believing any jurisdiction would simply toss those costs as unreasonable because the dog is only worth X by some subjective analysis of dog bluebook

Dogs work the same way under the law. If someone injures your dog, they are liable to either pay 1) to fix the dog or 2) replace the dog, whichever is less.

However in the case of an auto, if I had a rare car for example, and someone caused damage to it, I could, in fact, sue the person that cause the damage and prove the actual damage even if it was above the replacement cause. Their insurance may not cover the difference but that would not absolve that person of the liability

No you couldn't, and I challenge you to find a single case where liability for damage to simple property has ever exceeded replacement value.

You won't find it.

The closest you'll find is where the property was fundamental to some business and there was lost income that contributed to the damages. This does not apply to pets (though it could apply to say, race horses or some show dogs).

Where the Pet Owner was awarded damages even though the 13 year old dog "negligible market value" given its age.

Summary of the Case:

This Kansas case presents an issue of first impression as to the proper measure of damages recoverable for injury to a pet dog. The plaintiff's dog, a 13-year old dog of negligible market value, suffered a dislocated hip after being groomed at defendant's establishment. The appellate court found the lower court's award of damages based on the veterinary bills was proper where the bills were not disputed and represented an easily ascertainable measure. Specifically, the court held that when an injured pet dog with no discernable market value is restored to its previous health, the measure of damages may include, but is not limited to, the reasonable and customary cost of necessary veterinary care and treatment. The court was unconvinced by defendant's "hyperbolic" claim that such an award would lead to a floodgate of high-dollar litigation on behalf of animals with low market values.

However, what you just described sounds like a typical taxi ride as well, i.e. with a professional driver.

It is never the dog’s fault. We brought the dog into an unnatural environment. It is in our power and thus our responsibility to keep them safe. This is why pet accidents are so devastating.

The fault in an accident, be it car and car, car and pedestrian, car and cyclist, cyclist and pedestrian, cyclist and cyclist, or even pedestrian and pedestrian, doesn't necessarily mean moral culpability. Dogs are never culpable because they lack agency, but considering them to be at fault in an accident for the purposes of determining recourse isn't too far-fetched.

Yes, it is, because "at fault" means "could have chosen to do something else that would have prevented the accident". Since, as you admit, dogs lack agency, they are incapable of choosing to do something else. The human that is guiding them needs to, well, guide them.

I think it's debatable whether calling the dog or the owner the tortfeasor makes more sense when the dog is loose, because while the owner is responsible, there's some simplicity in saying that the dog broke the rule of the road that lead to the accident.

No, it's not. A tortfeasor has to be a person. Dogs are not legally persons, so they can't be tortfeasors.

> while the owner is responsible

Yes, exactly--just as any other tortfeasor is responsible.

> there's some simplicity in saying that the dog broke the rule of the road that lead to the accident.

You could say the dog "broke" the rule in the sense that it moved its body in a way that the rule prohibits; and in a mundane description of the facts of the accident, yes, that's what you would do. But the dog is incapable of understanding the rule in the first place, so the owner is responsible for training it appropriately (or, as I would imagine is much more common these days, keeping it on a leash and exercising reasonable prudence in controlling the dog).

To drive this point home, a pigeon dive bombing your windshield in the middle of an intersection could be correctly caused the cause of an accident. The pigeon is a free bird. It has no custodian.

Pets, on the other hand, are always in someone's custody. Custody relationships are complex, but ultimately come down to "you're responsible for this." Anything a dog could do to harm itself or others could have been anticipated, should have been anticipated and is ultimately the custodian's fault.

The pigeon is a nonentity in the accident. It's as much at fault, or not, as a tree. And it doesn't need medical or cremation bills paid. Cleanup is handled about the same way as debris from a car.

In a situation where the dog or owner isn't negligent but the driver is, it's useful to talk about whether the dog was on the leash, in the crosswalk, has right of way, is walking with the walk signal on, and is visible. You might prefer to leave the dog out of it and talk about the owner, but I could see myself wanting to get straight to the point and talk about the dog. I imagine lawyers also might be inclined to cut to the chase and talk about whether the dog was following the rules of the road.

All those things, as you say, can bear on the driver's responsibility (or the owner's responsibility, if, for example, the owner allowed the dog to go out into the street when the walk signal wasn't on). But that's part of the factual description of the case. It does not assign fault to the dog; if the dog did something like go out into the street when the walk signal wasn't on, that makes it the owner's fault, not the dog's.

The only argument I have remaining is that while it's an incorrect statement, I don't think saying the dog is at fault in an accident is insulting, because being at fault in an accident is often only an honest mistake (albeit sometimes with tragic consequences).

Personally I’d blame the “paid professional” before I’d blame the being with minimal rational thought.

Mate... It's a dog, we are the care-takers. Even if a dog is messed up in the head and bites people, it's probably been influenced by its' environment - people.

If we want to have cool pets, we have got to take responsibility.