What you think about the idea in the title? Please share your thoughts. The figure of $10,000 comes from Nathan Winograd, the founder of the No Kill Advocacy Center. It’s in US dollars but it could be in UK pounds or any other currency. It is as at this date (April 2023). It will be higher next year and the year after because of inflation.
It would be a statutory sum of money in compensation. They would be no discussion in court about what the emotional bond between companion animal and human caregiver was worth. And this is a sum of money to compensate for the loss of that emotional bond. It is compensation for emotional distress. Of course, there’d have to be sufficient evidence produced in court to prove the bond existed.
Compensation for emotional distress
Compensation for emotional distress is something which has troubled the courts when deciding how to compensate the owners of a cat or dog or any other animal for loss through negligence and/or breach of contract. The default position in 2023 remains as it was hundreds of years ago: no payment.
Classic case is tainted food
The classic case might be that a dog or cat eats tainted commercially prepared cat or dog food which can be bought on the shelves of supermarkets. From time to time, we read about contaminated dog food for instance which has killed an uncertain number of dogs but often in the hundreds and sometimes thousands.
We don’t know the numbers very often because people don’t come forward in every instance. You haven’t got to look far to see the stories on the Internet. For example, in 2021, in America, Midwestern Pet Foods was implicated in food contaminated with aflatoxin and their facilities had poor safety programs according to an npr.org.
The FDA believed that more than a 130 dogs were poisoned to death. I can remember a jerky meat treat of some sort that was made as I recall in China and sold in America which killed thousands of dogs. That scandal was never resolved by the way.
I won’t bother to go on because you will see perhaps hundreds of similar stories of dogs and cats poisoned to death by foods made by pet food manufacturers.
Pet food is safe and of a decent quality nearly always
Although to be fair to these businesses these events are rare when you remember that the pet food market is enormous and millions of tons of pet food is produced in the US annually.
Americans spent $100 billion on their companion animals last year, the seventh largest sector of the retail economy, growing at a pace 50% greater than the economy overall – Nathan Winograd
Shelter/pound deaths
Another cause of the death of dogs is when shelters or animal pounds negligently kill animals when it could have been avoided. If the animal shelter or pound director acted negligently compensation is due to the owner of the dog.
Historic low valuation of pet dogs and cats
But how much? Historically pet dogs and cats have been valued very poorly which is a point the Nathan Winograd stresses in his Pets Have Value Act. He has drawn up some legislation which deals with this historical anomaly.
The valuation of companion cats and dogs in tens of dollars e.g., $40 rather than thousands of dollars is a throwback to hundreds of years ago when, indeed, animals were dramatically undervalued and treated as functional creatures to support human life and society. In those days animals were ‘utilitarian’ to use a philosophical word. Nowadays they are members of the family with the same value as other members of the family if we are honest.
And the law has been very slow to catch up. Sometimes judges do grant compensation for emotional distress but they tend to be stepping outside of the mainstream law when they do this.
$10,000 statutory payment in compensation
Nathan Winograd says that there needs to be a statutory obligation to pay a fixed sum of compensation to reflect emotional distress and that some would be $10,000 in the US and an equivalent sum in other countries where they have the same lack of recognition of the value of the emotional bond between companion animal and human.
The amount will be written into law under the Pets Have Value Act and it would be inflation proof.
Cat still died months after they stopped eating mycotoxin contaminated recalled cat food
I agree with the principle here and the amount. However, proving your cat died or died prematurely because of poor or bad cat food is nigh impossible even with an expensive autopsy
I take your point. If you are suing for compensation the analysis as to the cause of death would be carried out within court proceeding or the cost of the autopsy would probably become part of proceedings. On winning the claim the pet food manufacturer would ideally be ordered to pay those costs!
But, if they lost the case, they would be likely liable to pay than manufacturers legal feeds and costs;
Also, such a scenario would inhibit most pet owners from taking such action in the first place.
(please excuse the typos, as I am still very fatigued)
Small claims court in USA and UK has a limit of $10,000 or £10,000. You could claim in the small claims court where costs are not awarded and where you could represent yourself. ✔️????
I didn’t know the USA also had Small Claims Courts.
In the UK you have to pay Application and Court Fees for almost all cases, unless you are on some form of Benefits. Is this not also true with Small Claims applications?
Yes, the fees are fairly modest. The whole process is meant to be cheap and user friendly to facilitate ‘justice’.