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Canine Case Is Doggone Tough
Tennessee lawyer is guardian to pet caught in a custody battle

By Stephanie Francis Ward

You could say counseling the parties in a particularly contentious Tennessee probate dispute is like herding cats—except their disagreement involves a dog: a 13-year-old golden retriever named Alex, to be exact, who has his own lawyer.
Alex’s owner, Ronald W. Callan Jr., committed suicide on New Year’s Day. The man’s divorced parents, Esther Snow Gnall and Ronald W. Callan Sr., both wanted custody of the dog and what they think is a fair share of their son’s estate, valued at more than $2 million. Callan Sr., the administrator of his son’s estate, would not let his ex-wife see the dog. So her lawyer asked the court to appoint a guardian ad litem for the dog to determine its best interest. In March, Paul Royal, of Memphis, Tenn., was lucky enough to get the nod.

Royal, associate at Crislip, Philip & Associates, had never represented a dog before, but says owning an elderly dog helped prepare him for the work.

“Except for the ‘communication problem,’ the dog and I got along very well,” Royal says of Alex. “I don’t expect any complaints to the state bar.”

The court accepted Royal’s plan, described in his guardian ad litem report (PDF), for each of the parties to keep Alex for two weeks at a time. During Callan’s two weeks, the consent order (PDF) holds, the dog will stay with him during the day at a business the father and son owned. Since Callan has cats at his home, Royal says, Alex will sleep nights at the home of Chris Griffith, the decedent’s former girlfriend.

While with Gnall, who has two other golden retrievers, Alex will also spend time with Kim Guill, Callan Jr.’s fiancée, with whom he had been living at the time of his death. According to court filings, there is considerable tension between Guill and Callan’s father. The elder Callan holds Guill responsible for his son’s death, and he repossessed a car that was registered in his son’s name but paid for by Guill.

In his report to the court, Royal wrote that all parties involved love the dog and would care for him appropriately.

“It is also believed that the parties are using this fight for Alex as a means of punishing each other for past transgressions,” the report states. “It’s clear that emotions on all sides are still running high due to the tragic nature of Ron Callan Jr.’s death.”

Gnall even asked one of Callan Sr.’s employees to kidnap the dog for her, according to court records. Gnall denies that she made that request.

“It’s not your everyday court case,” says Royal, who was paid $1,870 for his services. “There obviously is a humorous nature to it, but it’s very serious to the people involved.”

Indeed, the dog dispute may soon be back in court. Joe Townsend, a Memphis sole practitioner who represents Gnall, spoke with the ABA Journal eReport shortly after Gnall picked up the dog. The dog and Guill were in Townsend’s office during the telephone interview, and according to him, Gnall is not happy. She believes Callan has not had Alex on a proper diet, according to Townsend, and has switched veterinarians. All that is problematic, Townsend says, because the dog has kidney problems and arthritis.

“He takes glucose twice a day, and he needs to go swimming,” says Townsend, who has asked the court to add Gnall as a co-administrator of her son’s estate. “There’s way more to this case than the dog. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Other property from the estate includes a Florida condominium and a wine collection valued at $200,000.

While it’s not unusual for parties to fight over money or sentimental items in an estate, the desire to get the decedent’s pet is unusual, says Dennis Belcher, a Richmond, Va., trusts and estates lawyer. Instead, he says, it’s often hard to find someone willing to take the animals.

Belcher, a partner at McGuireWoods, says clients don’t like to consider their pets as property, even though they are under the law. Pets weren’t recognized as valid trusts in most jurisdictions until the advent of the Uniform Trust Code in 2000, he says.

“I have not seen an increase in pet trusts since then,” he says.

But Belcher has handled pet care requests for clients. One couple in their 60s with no children but three cats asked that he create a trust to be administered by a friend. They wanted a stipulation that the cats not have tattoos on their lips.

“And I said, ‘Who would do that?’ ” Belcher recalls. “Well, say I’m the trustee and paid to handle the cats—how do you know you’ve got the same cat you started with?”

His clients, who lived on the East Coast, also directed that in the event of their deaths, the cats would be sent to live at a California cat hotel. Their will left specific shipping instructions.

The couple actually outlived their pets, Belcher says, but such a will shows how much people care about their pets.

“Most people treat their animals like children, and the court treats them like toasters,” says Kristina A. Hancock, who chairs the animal law committee of the ABA’s Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section. Hancock, senior counsel with Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in Del Mar, Calif., applauds the court’s ruling for Alex the dog.

“Whenever we see an animal treated better than a toaster, we think that’s progress,” Hancock says.