The family of a North Penn School District student is suing the Montgomery Township Police Department and the township over a bite she suffered from a police dog in 1996, when she was in fifth grade. According to the lawsuit filed last week in Montgomery County Court, Christine Whitehouse of Lansdale sustained the injuries on Sept. 1, 1996, when she attended a police dog show presented at a local block party by her fifth-grade Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer.
At that show, the girl bent over to pet one of the dogs. The dog attacked Whitehouse, biting her upper chest and back and causing "severe and permanent injuries," according to the suit. The family contends that Whitehouse suffered injuries to her "neck, back, arms, legs, body, bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves and tissues of her back, arms, legs, shoulders and body."
The family is asking for up to $50,000 to compensate for its medical expenses and emotional distress. The township was named in the suit because, according to the suit, the bite would not have happened if not for the "careless, gross negligence, recklessness and negligence" of the police department and the township for not training its officers correctly. The officer, Scott Bendix, is also named in the suit.
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