Pet Food Recall News
by Michael Schaffer

The massive class-action lawsuits stemming from the 2007 pet food poisoning scandal were more than just a chance to get some justice for the unknown hundreds of pets who died from melamine-tainted food. It was also another skirmish in a low-level legal battle with major implications for pet owners and the people who sell them things. The big question: Should the legal system  treat pets the way many contemporary Americans do–ie, as family members?

If your family member is killed due to someone’s negligence, you can ask for emotional damages as part of the wrongful death lawsuit. The same doesn’t go for your best friend, or, for that matter, for man’s best friend. Thus a wrongful pet-death suit is treated like any old property-destruction suit. The most you can usually ask for is how much it cost to adopt and train a pet–a puny some, in most cases. Critics say that knowing they’ll never be on the hook for big bucks encourages vets and firms who make things like pet food to behave irresponsibly. The counter-argument is that remaking pet-law in the image of malpractice law will lead to higher costs and a shortage of vets.

In the past few years, there’s been some give on the prohibition against emotional-distress claims for pets. A small number of states allow it, but with a very low ceiling–$4,000, I believe, in Tennessee. For the most part, the legal system recognizes the changed role of pets in our lives by occasionally socking it to someone who has been cruel or cavalier. There was, for instance, a six-figure verdict won by a Kentucky woman whose horses had been killed. But in those cases, the money is technically being given because of the vileness of the killing, not the bonds between human and animal. If someone sued the Glenn Close character from Fatal Attraction, say, the big bucks might flow because boiling someone’s rabbit is a traumatizing thing for the human, rather than because the little girl will be deprived of her pet’s companionship.

As it turned out, the pet food lawsuits didn’t change this status quo–which was the main objective of the pet food companies, petrified of a future full of loss-of-companionship suits. But all the same, the settlement showed a certain openness about damages: People could ask to be reimbursed for medical tests, lost work time, carpet cleaning, grief counseling, etc. It’s a good bet the manufacturer of a product that ruined hundreds of iPods would never have agreed to such terms. So, in that way, at least, the courts recognized that pets weren’t just property. 

Anyway, VIN News this week indicates that the settlement is still stuck in court, because at least a few parties think the terms screw over the families of the deceased. So, who knows, history may yet me made. Read the whole story here.