Neighbors Dog In Our Yard After A Fight Died Now He Said He Wants To Sue Us. Long Sorry.

Last week my husband let our 2 dogs out in our fenced back yard. They peed but then took off around the corner of the house fast so my husband followed after some snarling was happening. Our neighbors dog (he didn't know who's it was at the time) broke out of their yard and was at our side gate in our front yard. He's not sure if the dog was menacing or not because our female dog broke through our wooden gate by the time he ran there and the dogs were already fighting. Our male dog also started in the fight.

My husband said it took 5-6 minutes to break the dogs up because once he would get one of our dogs off the neighbors, the neighbors dog or our other dog would go back at it. He called the police at one point panicked because he didn't know what to do. A neighbors ex showed up across the street and ran over telling him that was the neighbors dog and went to go get the neighbor. At that point my husband kicked our male in the face to get him off and inside and went back out to try to break up the other 2. Neighbor ran up yelling and they got the two dogs apart.

Obviously because we had 2 dogs (mastiff & pitbull) on his one husky, his dog took the brunt off it. My husband got bit and had to go to urgent care that night for stitches but he was honest with the cops and said there was so much commotion he had no idea who bit him. The next morning I took our pittie to the vet for bite wounds on her neck and a gash under her eye but they didn't hit muscle so she was fine. Our mastiff just had a small bite wound and a scratched face but nothing vet needed.

Right when we got home the neighbor came over and said he understood he was a "bad dog dad" for letting his dog get out and he was sleeping but would appreciate it if we could help him with the vet bill if possible because it was 3 grand for his and his dog was in a bad way and that we're neighbors/etc and don't need to involve the police. We agreed and my husband told him the cops said his dog was in our yard so we could press charges but didn't because we knew it was an accident and we really felt bad because our dog was able to break through our gate so we told him we would help pay half of his bill. (We were told by several people we shouldn't pay him anything but I felt like we were kinda responsible since our dog was able to the break through our gate) That's probably where we fucked up? We sent him $1000 and told him in a few weeks we could send the rest of he half he owed because we were neighbors. (Total of $1500). Well his dog died over the weekend and we told him we were sorry to hear that.

Today he messaged us saying he's out 4 grand for vets, has a dead dog, and if we don't agree to pay for the 4 grand he will take us to civil court because now he's anxious about our dog and said neighbors are worried and this is the second incident he heard about. We have no idea what he's talking about about because our dog has never fought with any other neighbors dog. She literally plays with both dogs on both sides of us doing zooms through the fence and both our side neighbors have been outside with us watching the dogs play. (We don't let our dogs stay outside unless we are out unless it's a quick 20 second pee).

Does this guy have any leg to stand on? We haven't texted him back. We're kind of pissed we could have been assholes and told him the cop said his dog was on our property and we could have pressed charges and didn't have to pay him anything and we still did because we felt bad for him. We weren't gonna even ask for money for the urgent care bill or our vet bills because to me it's a draw.

Any advice?