ARUBA--Coco, the dog from Aruba at the centre of an international struggle in a US lawsuit at Attleboro District Court, will get to stay at her current home in North Attleboro.
Lisa-Marie O'Connell, who had been sued over custody by two residents of Aruba, was awarded ownership of the mixed-breed dog in a decision by Judge Edmund Mathers, who heard the two-day trial last month.
"I'm over the moon; ecstatic. The easy thing to do would have been to give the dog back. I did the right thing," O'Connell said in an interview with The Sun Chronicle. "I won. I feel I will be forever indebted to the judge. He got it right," she added.
O'Connell was vacationing with her husband Dan in October 2014, when they and others came across two dogs on the beach which she testified were hungry, thirsty and covered with ticks. The dogs had no identification tags, she testified.
The couple took Coco to a veterinarian on the island and ended up adopting her with the help of an animal welfare agency. O'Connell testified she feared Coco would be euthanized by authorities in Aruba, which has a policy of killing stray dogs because they are so prevalent.
An animal welfare volunteer testified that authorities euthanize 8,000 dogs a year and that her organization assists with the adoption of about 150 dogs a year, mostly by tourists.
O'Connell was sued by Cornelia Hajdirnyak and Howard Tromp, next-door neighbours in Aruba who contended they had a co-ownership agreement of the dog they called "Whitey." They contended the dog ran away or got lost at some point while Hajdirnyak was at her home in Switzerland.
After she learned the dog was adopted by a tourist, Hajdirnyak testified, she and Lisa-Marie O'Connell ended up exchanging emails. She testified she offered to buy O'Connell a rescue dog and pay all her expenses if she returned the dog she knew as Whitey.
But in his five-page decision, Mathers found that Tromp and Hajdirnyak had not established that they owned the dog and that the ownership agreement they presented as evidence was not valid. He also found portions of their testimony inconsistent or not credible.
For instance, the judge found it inconsistent that they would craft an ownership agreement, and yet "be so lax as to allow the dog to run freely on a regular basis without a collar, identification tag or an implanted computer identification chip." He also ruled that even if the neighbours had legal ownership, it was surrendered "when they neglected to provide the basic needs of the animal ... allowing her to become a stray."
The judge noted Tromp made little or no effort to locate the dog. Mathers wrote that the care the dog was receiving at the time "was haphazard at best and likely to come from concerned tourists as from Mr. Tromp or a housekeeper."
The neighbours' lawyer Keith Langer of Wrentham said he has not read the judge's decision and could not comment on the ruling or whether his clients would appeal. The plaintiffs have 30 days to do so.
