The Los Angeles Animal Services payout for allowing dog attacks since allegedly achieving “no-kill” status in March 2021 could have bought 127,000 dog spays, preventing half a million puppy births
LOS ANGELES––Los Angeles Animal Services, for the fourth time in as many years, will be shelling out a seven-figure settlement for injuries resulting from non-disclosure of a dangerous dog’s bite history.
The dogs involved in the previous payouts were two pit bulls and a German shepherd.
This time, Los Angeles Times staff writer Sandra McDonald disclosed on February 26, 2026, “A jury awarded a woman $5.4 million after a Belgian Malinois named Maximus bit her at the East Valley Animal Shelter.”
Bite history allegedly concealed
The victim, Genice Horta, 51, testified that “neither the shelter nor the rescue group she worked for told her the dog, a Belgian Malinois named Maximus, had bitten a teenager [a 15-year-old girl] and a shelter employee, sending both to the hospital,” McDonald wrote.
“After six surgeries to repair the bones and nerves in her right arm,” McDonald summarized, “Horta was left with permanent damage,” suing Los Angeles Animal Services in 2022.
“After a 10-day trial,” McDonald recounted, “the Los Angeles County Superior Court jury decided last week that the city was 62.5% liable, the rescue group was 25% liable, and Horta herself was 12.5% liable for medical expenses and pain and suffering.”
The court-ordered payout to Horta will bring the total payout from Los Angeles Animal Services for negligence leading to dog attacks to $31.85 million in just the four seven-figure cases.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Trying to adopt way to no-kill backfired
That sum, at the current average price of a non-discounted, non-subsidized dog spay in Los Angeles, could have fixed 127,400 female dogs, preventing upward of half a million puppy births.
That would be approximately equal to all Los Angeles Animal Services dog intake from impoundments and owner surrenders over the past dozen years, while striving to achieve the 90% “live release rate” among all five city shelters that according to the Best Friends Animal Society defines a no-kill shelter.
Los Angeles Animal Services did briefly achieve a 90% agency-wide “live release rate” in 2021, the Best Friends Animal Society trumpeted, after which 10-year Los Angeles Animal Services director Brenda Barnette retired.
(See Los Angeles Animal Services chief Brenda Barnette to retire in May 2021.)
“This is a rescue operation” says Los Angeles Animal Services lawyer
The Horta case centered on the question of why Maximus the Belgian Malinois was not euthanized after attacking and injuring the teenager and the shelter worker in known previous incidents.
Los Angeles deputy city attorney Joshua Quinones responded in his closing argument, McDonald reported, that the Los Angeles Animal Services shelters are not “death row in Mississippi at midnight. This is a rescue operation.”
Which suggests that Quinones, and probably the senior personnel at Los Angeles Animal Services too, need to revisit Article 3 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, which makes extensively clear that the duties of Los Angeles Animal Services center on animal care and control, to protect human and animal health and safety.
The word “rescue” appears 17 times in Article 3, a 71-page, 41,824-word definition and description of Los Angeles Animal Services functions, but never in the context of being a part of the taxpayer-funded Los Angeles Animal Service duty mandate.
Hired HIT woman
“Quinones also argued that Maximus already had been sold to HIT Living Foundation,” a Los Angeles-area dog rescue organization, “when he bit Horta,” McDonald wrote.
That stretches the imagination a bit too, since merchandise––including shelter dogs––is not normally considered “sold” as part of a completed transaction until actually delivered to the customer.
Recounted McDonald, “HIT Living Foundation hired Horta to drive Maximus from the East Valley Animal Shelter,” in Los Angeles, “to Arizona. Horta had no prior experience with shelter dogs, according to the city’s attorneys.
[HIT Living Foundation contests McDonald’s statement that “HIT Living Foundation hired Horta”; see the full HIT Living Foundation under Comments, below.]
“On September 23, 2020,” McDonald continued, “after a shelter employee told Horta that Maximus had ‘kennel anxiety,’ she offered the dog a treat containing trazodone, a common anxiety medication for dogs, according to an amended complaint by Horta’s attorneys.
“Maximus took the treat, then lunged and latched onto Horta’s right hand and arm. A fuzzy video of the attack was played in court during the trial.
Circus Maximus
“Horta alleged that the shelter employee who brought Maximus to her car negligently failed to control him and never told her the dog could be dangerous. During the attack, the employee was gripping a metal pole with a cable looped around Maximus’ neck.
“The employee, Jose Humildad, testified that he told Horta not to approach Maximus with the treat.”
This begs the question of why a dog who could not be given a treat and had to be walked out on a catch-pole was deemed suitable for release to anyone to be taken anywhere.
Instead, despite the prior bite history that had seriously injured both the 15-year-old daughter of Maximus’ original owner and a Los Angeles Animal Services staff member, “Trying to find Maximus a home,” McDonald wrote, “animal rescuers posted repeatedly on Instagram days before the 1-year-old dog bit Horta, describing him as a ‘handsome misunderstood pup’ and a ‘young troublemaker’ in danger of being euthanized.
The same Los Angeles Times staff writer who exposed the Maximus circus, Sandra McDonald, in January 2026 disclosed the third seven-figure payout from the City of Los Angeles for a disfiguring dog attack in only three years.
Each case involved significant errors of judgment––and priorities––by Los Angeles Animal Services’ senior personnel.
Unless there have been undisclosed settlements, at least five similar cases may be pending.
The Wright stuff
Explained McDonald in her January 2026 exposé, “After Kristin Wright adopted a gray pit bull named Valerio from a Los Angeles city animal shelter, he attacked her, breaking her right arm and peeling the skin off her left arm.”
That attack, in August 2022, came just two days after Wright took Valerio home, after monitoring social media postings promoting Valerio since February 2022.
“Only later,” McDonald wrote, “did Wright discover that Valerio was surrendered to the shelter after biting his previous owner’s elderly mother in the face.
“Wright and her husband sued the city, reaching a $3.25-million settlement” in November 2025.
Disclosure policy
Los Angeles Animal Services communications director Agnes Sibal-von Debschitz told McDonald, both after Los Angeles Animal Services lost the Horta verdict, and after the Wright case, that the agency “formalized a disclosure policy in November 2025 that requires shelter employees to check a dog’s bite history before finalizing an adoption.”
But California AB 588, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 2, 2019, had already required such a policy to be in effect for almost six years.
AB 588 responded to at least 17 known disfiguring maulings and two deaths since 2014 inflicted by dogs rehomed or offered for rehoming by California animal shelters, all but one of those incidents allegedly involving a pit bull with undisclosed bite history.
What the law says
Stipulates AB 588, “If an animal shelter or rescue group knows, to the best of the knowledge of the shelter or rescue group, that a dog, at the age of four months or older, bit a person and broke that person’s skin, thus requiring a state-mandated bite quarantine, the animal shelter or rescue group shall, before selling, giving away, or otherwise releasing the dog, do both of the following:
“(1) Disclose in writing to the person to whom the dog is sold, given away, or transferred, the dog’s known bite history and the circumstances related to the bite.
“(2) Obtain a signed acknowledgment from the person to whom the dog is sold, given away, or transferred that the person has been provided information about the dog as required by this section.”
Violations of AB 588 “shall be punished by a civil fine not to exceed five hundred dollars ($500), imposed by the city or county in which the animal shelter or rescue group is located.”
What’s $500 compared to the cost of keeping a pit bull?
$500, however, is scarcely a deterrent compared to the cost of sheltering a pit bull indefinitely who cannot be safely rehomed, while trying to maintain a 90% “no kill” live release rate.
At least two previous payouts resulting from Los Angeles Animal Services dog rehoming policies were more than twice that high.
The Los Angeles City Council on June 14, 2024 approved a record $7.5 million settlement of claims resulting from a September 26, 2020 attack by a rehomed pit bull named O’Gee on Argelia Alvarado, 74, of Van Nuys.
(See $7.5 million award for mauling by pit bull rehomed from L.A. Animal Services.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Race against time
The Argelia Alvarado award surpassed the $6.8 million jury award issued on May 31, 2023 to former Los Angeles Animal Services shelter volunteer Kelly Kaneko, 36, who was mauled inside a city shelter by a German shepherd.
(See Jury orders L.A. Animal Services to pay $6.8 million to mauled volunteer.)
“Often,” McDonald observed, “volunteers and animal rescuers post social media pleas like the ones Wright responded to, in a race against time to save dogs from potentially being euthanized to make space in the overcrowded shelters.
“According to city records uncovered in Wright’s lawsuit and reviewed by The Times,” McDonald said, the pit bull “Valerio had been marked for euthanasia for dangerous behavior in April 2022, four months before Wright adopted him.
“But an error on the euthanasia form, marking the reason as overpopulation in the shelter rather than a risk to public safety, meant he was still available to ordinary adopters such as Wright.”
Level 4 injuries “didn’t sound serious”
Longtime Los Angeles dog rescue activist Kiana Kang acknowledged to McDonald that “she wrote the February 2022 warmheartsproject Instagram post” that first drew Wright’s notice.
That posting mentioned that Valerio had bite history, but Kang told McDonald that she learned about it from shelter volunteers, and it “didn’t sound serious.” Kang said.
“Kang said that at the time, she relied on shelter volunteers for information about dogs, and they didn’t remind her about the bite before she wrote” a second posting promoting Valerio in June 2022.
Candy stripers
Ed Boks, who now runs the Animal Politics blog, covering issues in animal sheltering from the perspective of more than 30 years heading major animal care and control agencies, from 2006 to 2013 headed Los Angeles Animal Services.
Los Angeles Animal Services during Boks’ tenure was not implicated in any fatal or disfiguring dog attacks. Neither did Los Angeles Animal Services do anything then that resulted in seven-figure payouts later to victims of any other culpable miscreance.
“In Valerio’s case,” wrote Ed Boks in Animal Politics, “the city didn’t just hide a level-4 facial bite behind a cheery kennel card.
“It effectively outsourced risk management to an informal network of volunteers and social media advocates.
“Imagine a hospital relying on candy stripers to convey a patient’s cancer diagnosis, or a newspaper letting unpaid freelancers publish directly to the front page,” Boks suggested.
“That is the level of institutional un-seriousness with which Los Angeles is treating public safety.”
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By way of introduction, we are the PR team for the nonprofit dog rescue group, HIT Living. We recently saw your article HERE in which it is inaccurately stated that the HIT Living Foundation hired Genice Horta to transport a dog to the Pampering Pets rescue group in Arizona. That is not correct, Pampering Pets was the dog rescue that hired Genice. We have included a statement below and are requesting that you kindly update your article with the correct information. Will you please let us know once this is done?
STATEMENT FROM HIT LIVING FOUNDATION:
We are deeply saddened that transporter Genice Horta was injured in the 2020 dog biting incident at a Los Angeles city animal shelter and we have genuine empathy for what she’s endured.
To clarify our role: At that time, Founder Heather Crowe was acting on behalf of HIT Living Foundation when the dog, Maximus, was pulled at the request of Alix Novack of Pampering Pets Rescue, then based in Arizona. As a California-based rescue and New Hope Partner with LA Animal Services, HIT Living formally requested and completed the pull, at which point ownership transferred to our organization. HIT Living’s involvement was limited to facilitating the dog’s release so he could be transferred to Pampering Pets.
Pampering Pets independently hired and arranged for a third-party transporter to pick up the dog directly from the shelter. HIT Living did not hire, select, or supervise the transporter and was not present at the time of the incident. The dog had a documented bite history, and we reasonably believed the receiving rescue and its contracted professionals would be fully informed and follow standard safety protocols.
A careful review of the Verdict form shows that it does not contain a specific question addressing whether any individual was or was not an employee of HIT Living. Accordingly, the form does not support a conclusion that the jury determined any person involved in this case to be an employee of HIT Living.
While the court determined partial liability based on technical ownership status, HIT Living was never in physical custody of Maximus. Our mission remains centered on responsible rescue. We remain committed to transparency and the highest safety and ethical standards in our work.
Wretched and distressing as it is to even read such reports, let alone witness or experience the very real mutilation suffered by the persons affected by such dog bites, one must thank you for not allowing this grievous data to be covered up and forgotten.
And one must express gratitude for the excellent work both you and Ed Boks are doing to cast the brightest of lights on this harrowing issue, for without it, those who are party to these attacks in any fashion, might go unidentified thereby allowing it to continue to fester and be repeated. This now corrupted system must end as it will only deteriorate further if not addressed in accountable legislative action.
I’m aware that various humane organizations are working diligently to find a way to do this, but thus far have not been successful.
In the meantime, the public, taxpayers, animal advocates and the ever victimized sentient creatures themselves continue to pay the monumental price each in its own way identified in this report. The problem could not be clearer, the solution also – the Prevention model must be adopted- the sooner the better for all involved. This is where the problem starts.
It’s extremely frustrating that this continues; and it’s all the more shameful that it is happening in my home town. Enacting BSL and destroying any and every biting dog would free up so much funding for spay/neuter and space needed by friendly, adoptable animals!
Sharing with gratitude.