A court has ordered the removal of dangerous dogs from a country path after a farmer complained that he could not access his property without risking a mauling.
Piju Borg filed a court application against Daniel Orsini, claiming that the dogs would attack anyone using the road and had, on some occasions, broken their chains.
Mr Borg, who runs a pig farm in the outskirts of Vittoriosa, said Mr Orsini was abusively and illegally occupying a property that belonged to the same family he rented the farm from. Mr Orsini, he said, had built some stone structures along the pathway he used to access the farm and had started keeping aggressive ‘fighting’ dogs on long chains. The animals, he said, would try to attack anyone using the path and, on some occasions had even broken the chains. A friend of his, he said, had been bitten by one of the dogs.
Mr Borg said he could not walk up to the farm without the risk of being attacked by the dogs. He also claimed that Mr Orsini was keeping the animals in filthy conditions. When one of the dogs died, Mr Orsini left it there for more than a week.
Mr Borg said Mr Orsini had faced criminal proceedings and had bound himself to keep his dogs under control but had instead started keeping dogs that were even more aggressive.
Mr Borg He asked the court to declare that by keeping the dogs in the pathway, Mr Orsini, was creating a grave disturbance on his right of enjoyment of his property. He also requested the courts to order Mr Orsini to relocate the dogs elsewhere.
Mr Orsini’s father confirmed that the dogs had, on occasion, broken their chains. But Mr Orsini denied that Mr Borg could not access the property and insisted that he (Borg) could reach the farm using other pathways.
Mr Borg said he was afraid that his children’s children, whom he would sometimes take to the farm, would be bitten. Some people would refuse to go down the path when the dogs were unchained, he said.
The court, presided by Mr Justice Joseph Azzopardi, said Mr Orsini had to take the necessary precautions to ensure that the dogs did not endanger people using the path and that Mr Borg enjoyed access to the farm.
It ordered him to remove the dogs from the pathway.