I do not think that attributes are for corner cases. I mean, they are the foundation on which player characters are built. So why would you not have them for NPCs and monsters? They seem pretty much essential to the system. I like consistency in the rules, and this is one part that I feel is a must be. To be honest, I dont care how the other systems FL have put out works. I care about seeing DB/DoD be true to its roots. That means it is a skill based system, and the skills are based on attributes. It should go the same for NPCs, Monsters, and Player Characters. Otherwise you might as well dispense with the rules, and just make stuff up. Which rarely are fair to the players if the GM decides things without applying rules to keep it fair.
Further as a GM, it makes it a lot easier to prepare npcs and monster when I have attributes to describe its various aspects, which then can be used as a basis for applying the rules.
I'm 50/50 on this. On one hand i agree that as is, npc's and monsters not having something to use for when the rules speciffically calls for it can be frustraiting. But i dissagree that they speciffically MUST have them. Just because something sticks too it's roots dos'nt automatically make it good, and being a GM myself, i have on occasion when making npcs skipped certain stats and attributes if i deem it unnecessary, sense there can be other ways of presenting a trait of a character without writing it down.
Now if Free League gives them attributes i won't make a fuss, but it is quite clear from the rules that npcs and monsters are meant to make as few dice rolls as possible (as preveiously stated as an example, if a dog bites you, you could just have the player make a STR check), so there are other ways of resolving this without attributes.