A federal judge has refused to pause a civil lawsuit against the city of Loveland and two officers for killing a couple’s 14-month-old puppy.

U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter decided that considering all factors, including whether the defendants are likely to succeed on their request to dismiss the case, there is no justification for halting the discovery of evidence.

“The public has a strong interest in understanding what occurred on June 29, (2019) and whether the shooting death of an allegedly friendly dog, who was showing no signs of aggression, was lawful, and whether the LPD issued a citation in retaliation for plaintiffs’ stated intention to go to the media about the incident,” Neureiter wrote in a May 24 order. “It may be that defendants’ conduct will pass constitutional muster, in which case the public is better served by knowing that hard reality, as fairly determined by the judicial process, sooner rather than later.”

Wendy Love and Jay Hamm first filed their lawsuit in Larimer County, but the defendants initiated a transfer to the Denver-based federal court. The couple leveled claims of unconstitutional seizure and retaliation arising from the slaying of their “affectionate and friendly” dog, Herkimer.

Love and Hamm were delivering firewood for their business on June 29, a Saturday, when they stopped in an empty parking lot next to a commercial building to make repairs to an item on their truck. The couple had three dogs with them that day, also including Bubba and Max. Love and Hamm let the animals out of the truck to stretch and drink water.

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The owner of the commercial building at 995 N. Wilson Ave. saw the truck on a surveillance feed and called Loveland police to investigate, citing previous tampering on his property. One of the responding officers was Mathew Grashorn.

Grashorn’s body-worn camera footage depicted him exiting his vehicle, with Bubba lying on the ground in the distance near the truck. Bubba began a “friendly gallop,” as the plaintiffs described, toward Grashorn, prompting the officer to pull his gun.

The first seconds of Grashorn’s video footage had no audio, but Bubba stopped running once the couple reportedly called for Bubba to return. Simultaneously, Herkimer also ran toward Grashorn, prompting Grashorn to shoot the dog within seconds.

Audio then captured Grashorn yelling, “Get back to the truck” at Love as she began crying and begging, “Please let me see him.”

Love approached to hold Herkimer as he lay injured on the ground, and Grashorn warned her, “He will bite you, he’s hurt.” The video footage did not depict any biting by Herkimer.

The dog spent four days in intensive care before his euthanization.

“No reasonable officer or reasonable person would have perceived this situation as a threat requiring the immediate destruction of an innocent citizen’s beloved pet,” wrote attorney Sarah Schielke in the lawsuit. “Officer Grashorn didn’t care. He had his gun out and his adrenaline was up so he sure as heck was going to shoot something. So he did.”

The other officer defendant, Sgt. Philip Metzler, reportedly told Grashorn that because Hamm claimed he would go to the media about the shooting, “We better scratch him a ticket for something.” Love and Hamm claimed this amounted to retaliation for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The defendants moved in December 2021 to dismiss the lawsuit, blaming Love and Hamm for allowing their dogs to “run around the property without a leash.”

“Officer Grashorn acted reasonably under the circumstance of having two large sized dogs charge at him immediately after he got out of his patrol vehicle to investigate plaintiffs’ crime of trespassing. Officer Grashorn had only 3 seconds to make a decision as to how to best protect himself,” wrote attorney Jonathan M. Abramson.

In early March, the defendants asked to pause, or stay, the discovery of evidence in the case until U.S. District Court Judge Raymond P. Moore had made a decision about whether to dismiss the lawsuit. If the two officers were entitled to qualified immunity, which bars lawsuits unless they violated a clearly-established constitutional right, such a finding could end the case entirely, they argued.

“The allegations in plaintiffs’ complaint — particularly regarding LPD’s patterns of victimizing vulnerable citizens and then working together as a cohesive policing unit to cover each incident up — are an urgent matter of community health and safety,” Schielke wrote in opposition to the request. She alluded to another claim she pursued against Loveland involving the violent arrest of a 73-year-old woman. Metzler was involved in that excessive force case, as well.

Neureiter, who evaluated the request to stay proceedings, noted that Love and Hamm’s lawsuit has already been pending for several months and there is difficultly in “gearing up” proceedings after a pause. Without weighing in on how Moore may decide the motion to dismiss, Neureiter determined he could take a “preliminary peek” at the court filings to get a sense for the viability of the allegations.

He believed it plausible that Moore would allow the case to proceed.

“The court’s brief review of the motions to dismiss does not suggest that these are insubstantial claims nor that there is an ‘immediate and clear possibility’ that the motions will be granted,” Neureiter wrote.

The case is Love et al. v. Grashorn et al.