Service Animals

Over the past year, I have devoted a substantial amount of time talking about service animals. I have discussed how dogs, miniature horses, and monkeys can be trained to become service animals. I have also discussed badly behaved ‘service animals’ — people who claim to have legitimate disabilities and pawn their untrained companion pets as service animals. This blog post marks the 15th article on the subject in the past year.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice revised the ADA regulations. Prior to the revisions, the ADA regulations had not limited “service animals” to any specific type of animal. Now, there is an extremely narrow limitation: only dogs meet the definition of service animals.

The newly issued regulations provides in part:

Service animal means any dog that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other mental disability. Other species of animals, whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained, are not service animals for the purposes of this definition.

The new definition of service animal will sorely disappoint individuals with disabilities who have and rely on parrots, monkeys, snakes, and miniature horses, as their service animals. As Martin Matheny points out, “dogs are great, but there are some things that they cannot do.”

But wait a moment.

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It isn’t enough to know the federal laws that protect the right of persons with disabilities to be accompanied by their service animals. Good attorneys and advocates need to be intimately familiar with state law as well. Often, state law may offer additional protections and benefits than federal law provides. One of the best sources for researching state statutes relating to service animals is the Michigan State College of Law’s Animal Center website.

In last week’s post about calculating the value of service animals (The Legal Value of Service Animals), I explained the difficulties in calculating damages associated with the injury or death of a service animal. When a service animal is injured or killed, there are many legal questions that must be considered. Fortunately, some states have passed laws that help people with disabilities recoup the costs associated with the harm or death of their service animals without the need to resort to expensive litigation.

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The value that individuals with disabilities derive from service animals is immeasurable. But the concept of “immeasurability” is not a quantifiable term. From a legal perspective, it is important to measure loss of life and damage to property into some quantifiable term and explain how damages can be reasonably measured.

This blog post is concerned with a single question: When a person or companion pet physically harms or kills a service animal, how much damages can the disabled owner reasonably anticipate to win in court?

This is not an easy question.

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Recently, someone who trains service dogs for the blind booked a plane flight to visit family. She wanted to take the dog with her on the plane. Doing so would be an excellent experience for any service dog in training. When she called the airport to see if she could change her seat to sit at the bulkhead so that she and the dog would have more room, she was informed that since the dog was not yet a service dog, the dog would not be allowed to board the plane unless the airline gave her permission.

Caption: A collie sits next to her owner at an airport.

Is this a correct interpretation of the law?

It appears so. The law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability on aircrafts falls under the Airline Carrier Access Act. The Federal Register, Vol. 68, No. 90 (May 9, 2003), page 24876 (available here), provides, in part:

“Although ’service animals in training’ are not pets, the ACAA [Airline Carrier Access Act] does not include them, because ‘in training’ status indicates that they do not yet meet the legal definition of service animal. . . . [However] some airlines permit qualified trainers to bring service animals in training aboard an aircraft for training purposes.  Trainers of service animals should consult with airlines, and become familiar with their policies.”

The 2009 updated version of the Federal Register, page 103, provides identical language.

Based on these sources, it doesn’t appear that service-animals-in-training can accompany trainers on any airplane for training purposes unless airline grants permission to do so.

Bottom line: if you train service dogs and want to take them on a commercial aircraft, check with your service dog organization for recommended airline carriers and double-check with the airline to ensure that their policy hasn’t changed. The following blog post “How to travel with your Assistance or Service Dog, a step by step guide,” contains helpful tips to keep in mind when traveling. See also this post: “Flying with your Dog.”

Have a safe flight!

There is a well known saying: “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Let’s face it, no one likes to think about their own mortality. But those of us who have family and pets should consider having a will drawn up and/or a trust established to ensure that our family and pets are taken care of.

It is important that pet owners think about where they want their pets to end up after the owners pass away. Equally important, service animals can survive their disabled owners. But there are other reasons why it is important to consult with an attorney to prepare certain papers to ascertain that your pet is taken care of. Consider these three scenarios:
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