LA County seeks dismissal of suit over death of bomb-sniffing dog

County attorneys are asking that a lawsuit filed by a veterinarian who claims members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fabricated a memo to cover up the 2020 death of a bomb-sniffing dog be dismissed for lack of a showing of special damages.

Plaintiff Yolanda Cassidy maintains in her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleging false light and invasion of privacy that the memo falsely stated that she examined the dog — a black Labrador retriever named Spike — and could not determine what killed him.

“Dr. Cassidy was highly successful in her job and in 2022 she was on the verge of launching her own veterinarian clinic,” the suit states. “She was well-respected and her reputation was stellar. Unfortunately, Ms. Cassidy’s privacy was violated and her reputation was destroyed by corrupt Sheriff’s Department officials.”

The suit brought July 6 names the county, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva and two other individuals as defendants. But in court papers filed Thursday with Judge Alison Mackenzie, attorneys for the county maintain that Cassidy is not specific about her special damages claim and admits that her career is going according to her plan.

Cassidy acknowledges that she recently opened up her own business and she does not maintain that she lost any employment due to the words attributed to her in the memo, the county lawyers further maintain.

The use of Cassidy’s name in the LASD memo was not a misappropriation of her name for commercial benefit, but was done so for transparency, the county attorneys maintain in their court papers.

According to the suit, after Spike died in the care of a sergeant under suspicious circumstances after overheating in a patrol car, Villanueva and an LASD chief “were so concerned about covering up the tortuous death of a police dog, they resorted to fraud to hide it, with no concern for harming innocent individuals to achieve their ends.”

The defendants “fabricated” that Cassidy saw Spike after he died and concluded that the dog may have died from causes, according to the suit, which further states that they were “fully aware that Ms. Cassidy never treated or saw Spike and therefore would not have offered and did not offer opinions of Spike’s death.”

During his successful 2022 campaign to unseat Villanueva, former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna stated that Villanueva was so corrupt that he even covered up Spike’s death, the suit states. But so far Luna’s administration has not conducted a criminal investigation, according to the suit.