Just when you thought you had seen everything…. Rent-to-Own Dogs! Apparently, it is illegal to do lease out a dog in Massachusetts. It does seem perfectly fine, as far as I can tell, to sell a dog on installment credit in Massachusetts and to take a lien on Fido. In other words, the rent-to-own outfit got dinged for not structuring its product as a plain old sale.
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3 responses to “Rent-to-Own Dogs”
I should have noted that Bob Lawless already covered this issue in a prior post:
https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2019/03/pug-repossession.html
Curiously, the Massachusetts law covers only dogs, not other pets.
For teaching consumer law, I have used a case out of Minnesota on a dog lease – it’s Danger v. Nextep Funding, LLC, 355 F.Supp.3d 796 (2019). Students love it.
Also, to clarify, I think this is meant to be an animal protection statute, rather than about protecting owners.