Durban - The fight to keep a 3-year-old Saint Bernard on the plush Mt Edgecombe Country Club Estate will head to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
On Thursday the owners of 75kg Theodore said they would approach the SCA to appeal Judge Peter Olsen’s decision this week in the Pietermaritzburg High Court to turn down their leave to appeal against his earlier judgment which ordered them to remove the dog within three months from the estate.
“The fight continues,” Edward Abraham, Theodore’s owner said on Thursday.
“We have come this far and we are not just going to give up. I think we were unlucky not to get leave to appeal and I just don’t understand it. Theodore has been with us far too long and we will not just give up on him. He is an integral part of our family,” he said.
Edward and his mother, Pathmasolahani Abraham, took the estate to court in 2012 when they were refused permission to keep Theodore on the property.
Judge Olsen handed down a judgment in September, siding with the golf estate.
The judge ordered at that time that the Abrahams remove Theodore from the estate within three months.
Following the judgment, the Abrahams launched the application for leave to appeal against the decision.
Advocate Kemp J Kemp, representing the Abrahams, submitted that his clients should be allowed to keep the dog at the luxury estate.
The estate only allows non-aggressive breeds of dog that do not exceed 20kg when fully grown.
Kemp argued that the estate’s management association erred in its decision to remove Theodore, especially since there were other residents who had dogs larger than 20kg.
The legal team for the estate argued that the Abrahams had signed a written agreement to abide by the rules of the estate when they moved in, in 2002, and should have challenged at that time whether the rules governing dogs were reasonable.
Judge Olsen agreed and found that there were no grounds on which to appeal his judgment.
The Abrahams’ application for leave to appeal was dismissed.
In terms of Judge Olsen’s original judgment, Theodore will have to be removed from the estate by the end of the year.
Daily News