A St. Landry Parish man says he is filing a lawsuit after a traffic stop left him receiving a ticket because his dog was not wearing a seatbelt.
Eric Champagne took to Facebook, sharing that a Washington town police officer gave him the ticket because his pup was not buckled up.
Champagne was at a Family Dollar store when an officer came in asking for the driver of his vehicle over the intercom. When he told the officer it was his car, the officer said that he was reported for swerving on the highway, but when he received his ticket, it had the added fee, WFLA reported.
“Kind of confused, and I went to look at the ticket when he gave it to me, and it said careless operations and no seatbelt for your dog. So I was like, what’s going on?” Champagne said. “I never heard of it being a law that your dog has to have a seatbelt, and I guess according to him not only is it a law, but he doesn’t even have to see it to ticket me for it as long as a civilian said happen he has to take their word for it.”
During the interaction, Champagne shared that he told the officer how ridiculous the whole situation was.
“I made sure he knew I would see him in court and that it would be a cold day in hell before they see a dollar from me over that,” Champagne said.
To make matters worse, he said that his dog did, in fact, have a seatbelt on in the car, but the officer refused to listen.
“I get laughed at for having a dog seatbelt. You know you spoiled your dog too much. I didn’t think that wasn’t a common law. If that was a law, you see it a lot more often,” he said.
While he was initially scared of facing repercussions for speaking out, he is now planning on filing a lawsuit Monday to fight what he calls nonsense ticketing.
“These ain’t no $50, $60 tickets. These are $300, $400 tickets we’re talking about,” Champagne said. “I hope that other people who received nonsense tickets like this can come forward and say that they did it, and maybe they can put a stop to this.”
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