Monday, May 9, 2005
Woman awarded $45,000 in cat death
Damages for dog mauling may be feline record
A Seattle woman whose cat was mauled to death by a neighbor's dog was awarded more than $45,000 last week in her wrongful-death lawsuit against the dog's owner, her attorney announced yesterday.
It is likely the largest damage award in the nation relating to the death of a cat, said her attorney, noted animal-law expert Adam Karp.
In the lawsuit, filed in Seattle District Court in November, Paula Roemer alleged that her beloved 12-year-old black-and-white shorthair cat, Yofi, was attacked and killed in her back yard in February 2004 by a black chow chow belonging to her neighbor.
She was so traumatized that she began having sleep disturbances and panic attacks, sank into depression and began smoking heavily, she wrote in a sworn declaration.
"We went to great pains to demonstrate how close she was to Yofi," said Karp, founder of the Washington State Bar Association's Animal Law Section and an adjunct professor of animal law at Seattle University and the University of Washington.
As a result, her compensation for the pet ties the record-high jury award of $30,000 in a California veterinary malpractice suit, Bluestone v. Bergstrom, for a pet's "unique" value, Karp said.
Judge Barbara Linde also awarded $15,000 for Roemer's emotional distress.
Including cremation and counseling costs, the total award came to $45,480.
Given that Roemer had to prove she was emotionally attached to the cat and had suffered tremendously as a result of its death, the amount of the award "doesn't strike me as that unreasonable," said torts expert Louis Wolcher, a law professor at the University of Washington.
Traditionally the law treated pets as personal property, like a car or oven.
But in recent years, the legal community has debated whether animals should have independent status or be considered something more than property.
And while common pets -- as opposed to show animals -- have not had a high economic value, their sentimental value can be very high, Wolcher said.
Now when damages are awarded for a pet's destruction, "you keep the legal fiction that it's property, but you begin to treat it other than something like just a toaster oven," he said.
The death of Roemer's cat was particularly upsetting because she had rescued it during a trip to Israel about 12 years ago, when she found the kitten abandoned and dying on the streets of Yaffo, court documents say.
"I promised Yofi, out loud, every single day of her life, she would be happy and never again hungry, thirsty, and miserable," Roemer wrote. "My heart is tremendously heavy with sorrow and guilt that I could not protect her from this fate."
The night of the attack, Roemer returned from walking her own dog to find the neighbor's chow chow in her backyard garden, biting and shaking her cat. The dog dropped Yofi and attempted to attack another cat of Roemer's, but she was able to throw the cat into the house, according to her sworn declaration.
She herded the dog out of her yard and searched frantically for Yofi. When she found the cat, it was so mangled that she almost couldn't identify it, she wrote in court documents.
Roemer charged that her neighbor had allowed his dogs to run loose repeatedly and had not built a fence as promised. The neighbor lost the suit by default, without defending against it, court records show. And Karp said the man pleaded guilty to negligent control of an animal, a misdemeanor, in connection with the dog's attack. The neighbor could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Karp said the $45,480 award is significant partly because it's the first to indicate that feline companions are as valuable as canines. Americans' tendency to value dogs more than cats "is just completely insane," he said.
"For people who live alone -- they're retired, they're elderly -- this is their family," he said. When their loved one is lost, "the impact is severe."
The fact that the judgment in Roemer's case came from a judge rather than a jury was significant, said Wolcher, the professor.
"Jurors can be expected to be swayed by emotional factors," he said. "But you like to think that judges are more sober."
Whether the judgment will affect future cases is uncertain, Wolcher said. But it will certainly spark interest in the legal community, he said.
And if nothing else, "people are going to make sure they lock up their dogs."
