## Facts

- Steven Katsaris owned two Belgian sheepdogs (one a pet, one trained for personal protection) on land adjacent to a ranch owned by Robert and Betty Harvey.
- While Katsaris was away, two teenage neighbors cared for the dogs; the dogs escaped the kennel area and remained loose despite efforts to retrieve them.
- The dogs entered the Harveys’ property near confined livestock.
- Melvin Kenneth Cook, a ranch employee, shot and killed both dogs; his accounts varied as to whether the dogs were attacking the Harveys’ dog or merely upsetting cattle.
- Cook did not check for identification tags and dumped the dogs’ bodies in a ditch on the ranch; he gave inconsistent statements about whether he acted at the Harveys’ direction.
- Katsaris later learned the dogs had been shot and located their bodies.
- Katsaris sued for damages for the loss of the dogs, negligence (including negligent supervision and related emotional-distress theories), and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) based on the killing and the disposal/concealment and denial regarding the dogs’ fate.
- After Katsaris’s case-in-chief, the trial court granted defendants’ motion for judgment on all claims; Katsaris appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Cal. Food & Agric. Code § 31103 conferred a privilege to kill dogs trespassing in a livestock confinement area, defeating liability for the dogs’ death.
2. Whether the Harveys owed Katsaris a duty (including a duty to supervise Cook) sufficient to support negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress when the killing was statutorily privileged.
3. Whether the manner of killing, disposal, concealment, and denial could constitute “extreme and outrageous conduct” outside the statutory privilege, supporting an IIED claim.

## Decision

- Affirmed judgment for defendants on the claim seeking damages for the dogs’ death because § 31103 privileged the killing under the circumstances presented.
- Affirmed judgment for defendants on negligence-based claims, holding defendants owed no duty to prevent conduct authorized by the statutory privilege.
- Reversed judgment on the IIED claim and remanded because the privilege to kill trespassing dogs did not necessarily immunize additional conduct (disposal, concealment, denial) that a factfinder could deem extreme and outrageous.

## Legal Principles

- Cal. Food & Agric. Code § 31103 grants livestock owners (and those acting for them) a privilege to kill dogs trespassing in an area where livestock are confined, barring civil liability for the killing itself when statutory conditions are met.
- When a defendant’s conduct is statutorily privileged, negligence claims premised on preventing that privileged conduct fail for lack of duty.
- A statutory privilege may be limited to the privileged act and not extend to collateral conduct; intentional tort liability may remain if the plaintiff shows conduct exceeding all bounds tolerated in a civilized community and causing severe emotional distress.
- Whether alleged collateral conduct is sufficiently extreme and outrageous for IIED is generally a factual question not properly removed from the jury at the close of the plaintiff’s evidence when evidence could support the claim.

## Conclusion

The court held that a livestock-protection statute privileged the killing of trespassing dogs and defeated property-damage and negligence theories, but it allowed an IIED claim to proceed based on evidence that defendants’ post-killing conduct—disposal, concealment, and denial—could fall outside the statutory privilege and be found extreme and outrageous.


Katsaris v. Cook, 180 Cal. App. 3d 256, 225 Cal. Rptr. 531 (Ct. App. 1986)