If your neighbor's vicious pit-bulls repeatedly tunnel under your fence, only to one day maul you to death, take note:

Your family can sue — not the owner of the beasts — but the city, which presumably has much deeper pockets.

Such is the case in the tragic death of Christina Casey, and her brother's recently filed lawsuit against the City of Moreno Valley.

As was widely reported last November, 53-year-old Casey was found dead at her home after her neighbor's dogs dug a hole under a wooden fence separating the properties and took a chunk out of her throat.

Bill Casey, her brother, said that Christina Casey had told the city's animal control authorities on at least one prior occasion that the aggressive animals had tunneled free into her yard, but that the city did nothing about it.

Now Bill Casey is suing the city for not preventing the deadly attack.

Bill Casey claims that the city knew the neighbor's dogs had behavioral problems and were insecurely confined by the fence.

According to the lawsuit, first reported by Courthouse News Service:

Despite [the city's] direct knowledge of the predatory and aggressive nature of the dogs, their knowledge of their ability to escape confinement … [the city] took incomplete, insufficient or no remedial action as required … to remove the threat of harm the dogs posed. As a direct consequence of [the city's] failure to discharge their duties … [the city] caused or contributed to the incident which resulted in the dog-mauling death of [Casey's] sister.

Making the death all the more tragic (as if it were possible), Bill Casey has said that his sister was two days away from moving to a new home in order to get away from the dogs.

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