A Dogfight in Haddonfield

IN JANUARY 2008, the Haddonfield Municipal Court trial on the matter of the Taffets’ dogs began, presided over by Judge John J. Spence Jr. In three hearings spread over three months, neighbor testified against neighbor in an acrimonious parade. Among the revelations were that Jackie Castorino had a civil suit pending against Bob Taffet. The way her mom, Shelly, explained it, Jackie was being teased at school by kids who thought her dog-bite scars were bullet holes. Jackie came home crying, and begged her mom to call Dr. Taffet: “Tell him I want them fixed. … I need them fixed.” Shelly called and left a message with Michele. The doctor didn’t call back. She left a message on the answering machine. The doctor didn’t call back. She sent a letter to his office, giving him a deadline. “And he never got back to me, so then I called a lawyer,” she said.

In his testimony, Bob Taffet gave his version of what happened with Dr. Harkins at Crow’s Woods: “I’ve never seen anyone in my life break up a dogfight by throwing their body into the middle. … That’s really not a well thought-out plan.” (Harkins also sued Taffet in civil court; Taffet’s insurance company settled the suit.)

Taffet said Dominic Dorazio was “scraped” by Rocky, not bitten. He said his own son, Sam, was also “scraped,” not bitten. He said he used electric fencing inside the house to “zone off” certain areas, and that the dogs always wore their fence collars on his property, indoors and out.

As extreme as that sounds, Michele explains it matter-of-factly: “They’ll eat an entire roast beef if they get in the kitchen, or a chicken. Or you’ll come home and there will be garbage all over the floor.” “

And we have cats,” Bob adds. “The cats need a place they feel safe. And we need a place in the house that isn’t dog-ified.”

What’s more, Bob Taffet testified, he had put down a deposit on a four-foot-tall aluminum fence that would be used with the electric fence, all around the property except for a section protected by dense brush.

The aluminum fence went up in the spring of 2008, at a cost of $35,000. But it wasn’t until September that Judge Spence ruled on the case, dismissing the charges relating to three of the dogs but finding Rocky “potentially dangerous” due to the bites to Dr. Harkins and Jackie Castorino.

Prosecutor Donald S. Ryan demanded all the remedies state law provided: a warning sign, muzzling Rocky in public, a million bucks in liability insurance, a six-foot-tall enclosure for Rocky in the Taffets’ yard. Defense attorney William O’Kane filed an appeal in October, arguing that there hadn’t been any incidents with Rocky in years: “This is the equivalent of prosecuting a 40-year-old man for fights occurring when he was in grade school and high school.”

Superior Court Judge John McNeill III heard arguments in the appeal on January 21, 2009. Shortly thereafter, he overturned the municipal court’s decision.

“I had a golden retriever,” the judge said in explaining his finding that the dogs were playing when Harkins provoked the Ridgebacks. Gryphon wasn’t being attacked, McNeill opined; he was being submissive. It was dark in Crow’s Woods, the judge noted. The Ridgebacks “were in an excited, aroused state.” And provocation “is a … somewhat amorphous term.”

But there was more to it than that, the Taffets say. “Judge McNeill came out to our house,” Michele explains. “He met the dogs. No one else would do that.”

McNeill’s decision let Rocky off the hook. None of the remedies state law demanded would be required.

The state’s attorneys didn’t want to appeal. They didn’t think they could win. But Haddonfield solicitor Mario Iavicoli decided to, despite the expense. In his brief asking the Superior Court to reverse McNeill’s decision, he wrote, “Rocky is a tragedy waiting to happen.”

That was exactly why Susanne and her husband had filed their complaints and shown up in court — to avoid something truly awful happening because of Bob Taffet’s dogs. “He’s a medical doctor. He’s pledged to do no harm,” Susanne says. She’s taken her crusade to anyone who will listen, appearing on Michael Smerconish’s talk-radio show, working her media contacts, feeding information to reporters. “Do I sound like a crazy person?” she asks.

Taffet, for his part, feels hounded. He’s spent thousands of dollars trying to appease the neighbors. He installed the new electric fence. He installed the aluminum fence. He stopped walking his dogs off-leash. He’s done much more than the law requires. “If I had a dog I thought was dangerous, if I had to be afraid of him attacking me, my family or anybody, anytime, I’d put him down,” Taffet says. “But there’s a huge difference between the incidents that have occurred and how they’ve been described.”