Court Opinion

ID: 9847196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:55:36.048135+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:02.913776
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
This is an appeal from a summary judgment ordering that defendants “be . . . restrained from keeping and maintaining dogs or other animals in pens or runs within 40 feet of residence of the plaintiff and they shall remove the run presently and now existing,” there having been a violation of Section 22-2-16, Salt Lake County Ordinances 1966. The case should be affirmed with costs.
Defendants have referred to other ordinances having to do with animals, pets, fowl, canary birds, and the like, in the main opinion, that seem to be inconsonant with the Call of the Wild, subject of this litigation.
The discovery process developed the fact that there was a violation of the ordinance, and it appears that as a matter of law there was no genuine issue in that respect.
The order of the court is not unreasonable and is in harmony with action and procedure prescribed in the enforcement of the ordinance. The dogs must do one thing one way, I suppose, and canary birds another; but counties, I take it, should have *941considerable latitude in controlling them by ordinance.
The main opinion seems to express a certain- amount of affection for dogs. So do I, but mostly on the ranch. This case has its problem with barks and odors and with pens and corrals. The opinion pushes the Noscitur a sociis a bit too far in disassociating the former from the latter as to nuisance values, — seemingly justifying the presence of the Hound of the Baskervilles in a “pen” in a contiguous neighbor’s back yard to the exclusion of Black Beauty, which lovely horse, is relegated to a “corral.” It is like saying that a cargo that is not carried in a car but is something to be carried in a ship,- is something different than a shipment that is carried in a car and not in a ship, albeit it is one and the same commodity and the same by hundredweight.
I am of the opinion that the trial court should be affirmed.
CROCKETT, J., does not participate herein.