There have been some new cases showing that some people did win awards.
Being in the legal field myself, I have found that people who go
through these types of lawsuits (only involving people instead of pets)
find that the process itself can cause much emotional distress, and it
might not be worth pursuing.  It can be quite costly as well.  Lawsuits
can drag on for a quite a while too.  It might be quite difficult to
prove that the vet in this case didn't use an appropriate standard of
care.  Here's another side that might be of interest.  You can see how
much people have spent on attorney fees and costs incurred.

"The patient had dental surgery, there were complications, and he died.
Now his family members are accusing the doctor of negligence and
claiming that the episode caused them emotional distress.

 Duane Flemming is an animal opthamologist and a lawyer and past
president of the American Veterinary Medical Law Association.
By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

It's a typical medical malpractice case - except in this 3-year-old
dispute, the patient was a sheepdog named Lucky.

Barry Silver, the attorney for Lucky's owners, says that when the case
goes to trial this year in Broward County, Fla., he intends to ask
jurors to award hundreds of thousands of dollars to the dog's owners,
Adam Riff and his mother, Ellen.

If Silver is successful, Lucky's case would join a series of recent
court decisions that essentially have treated animals as human under
the law. In a reflection of the special place that pets have come to
hold in Americans' hearts, U.S. courts are bucking centuries of legal
decisions that have defined animals as property.

In recent years, courts in New York, Maryland and Texas have resolved
custody disputes involving pets by deciding what's best for the pet.
Judges in 25 states have administered financial trusts set up in pets'
names.

And as Lucky's case indicates, there has been another turn in animal
law: Courts have begun to take claims of veterinary malpractice
seriously.

Since 1997, courts in Kentucky and California have awarded damages to
pet owners for loss of companionship, emotional distress and other
factors that go beyond the way courts have long assessed animals'
worth: by their market value.

That's the standard the Riffs are challenging in their lawsuit against
the Welleby Veterinary Center in Broward County.

"I loved Lucky like he was my son, my little boy," says Adam Riff, 26,
an Internet marketing salesman.

So for Riff, it was painful to hear an opposing lawyer's argument to a
judge, during an unsuccessful attempt to get the lawsuit dismissed,
that Lucky "had depreciated" in the eight years after Riff had bought
him for $300.

"Like a car," Riff says.

Veterinary malpractice cases have not involved the staggering sums that
can be associated with claims against doctors who treat humans.

The largest judgment in favor of a pet owner has been $39,000, which a
jury in Orange County, Calif., awarded last year to Marc Bluestone.

His mutt, Shane, died of liver failure after a misdiagnosis. In a
verdict that is being appealed by the vet, the jury awarded Bluestone
$30,000 for the dog's "unique value" to his owner, and $9,000 for vet
bills.

Treating pets like humans

Critics of such judgments sound much like those who warn that
multimillion-dollar medical malpractice verdicts for human patients are
driving up the cost of health care.

Richard Cupp, a Pepperdine University law professor, says that if
courts routinely start to award emotional damages to pet owners,
veterinary care will cost more, leading to "more suffering" among pets
because "fewer pets will get sent to the vet."

He also fears the movement to treat pets more like humans under the law
could lead to an avalanche of far-fetched animal rights lawsuits, such
as claims on behalf of beef cattle headed for slaughter or monkeys used
in medical research.

The emergence of veterinary malpractice lawsuits is driven not just by
Americans' deep emotional bonds with their pets but also by advances in
veterinary medicine that have raised expectations that pets will live
longer.

The USA's 64 million pet owners now spend more than $18 billion a year
on pet health care, according to the American Veterinary Medical
Association, which says that the owner of a typical American dog will
spend $11,500 on the animal during its lifetime - half of it on
medical care. Pet hospitals now have specialists such as cardiologists,
neurologists and oncologists.

Steve Wise, a Boston lawyer who has taught animal law at Harvard Law
School, notes that veterinarians who help to foster the attachment
between owner and pet also benefit financially from it.

"For a vet to charge $1,000 to do a procedure on a dog who has a market
value of $10, the only reason anyone would consider paying it is, they
don't care what the market value is," Wise says.

Duane Flemming, a veterinarian, lawyer and past president of the
American Veterinary Medical Law Association, says vets who promote the
emotional bond between owner and pet are hard-pressed to go to court
and claim the animal had little value.

"It's a hypocrisy to say, 'Spend more money on animals because they are
worth more,' and then not be willing to award more when there's a
loss," he says.

Flemming, who practices in Concord, Calif., is an ophthalmologist who
says he once performed eye surgery on a one-legged duck.

"You used to go to the vet and get a bill for $20," he says. "Now you
go ... and you've got an $18,000 bill. If your dog died, the only
possible explanation is that someone did something wrong."

In Houston, Fritz the (late) Persian cat was a patient at an animal
hospital that has so many specialists it has an entire wing for aviary
care.

"They run out with a gurney and put the animal on" it, says Jeffrey
Dorrell, a Houston lawyer who is suing Gulf Coast Veterinary Internists
on Fritz's behalf. "It's almost theater. They deliberately raise
expectations with the magnificence of their facility."

Fritz was diagnosed with pancreatitis and a cancerous mass in late
2002, the lawsuit says. Gulf Coast vets wanted to treat the
pancreatitis first. Two months and many procedures later - including
a failed effort to help Fritz gain weight - the tab topped $7,800,
the lawsuit says. Then Fritz's owner, Jennifer Beegle, was told to take
him home to die.

'Nothing to do' with fee

"The case has nothing to do with what they charged us, although my
father is a retired physician, and I will tell you, you pay more to
have an MRI done for your animal than what would be charged at the very
finest hospital for a human being," she says.

Beegle is seeking a refund of her vet fees. At Gulf Coast, she says, "I
saw grown men sobbing and pulling out three and four credit cards.
Luckily, my parents had a $50,000 limit on their card. That was the
first thing I was asked: What was the limit on my credit card?"

But Beegle, 36, says she would have paid more to save Fritz. She also
says she wishes someone would have told her upfront that Fritz should
have been put to sleep. "If he was not able to be saved, I never would
have put him through this," she says. "I am suing them because he
suffered. He had feelings. They will not profit off my cat's pain."

Gulf Coast's attorney, David Knight, says his clients dispute nearly
all of Beegle's allegations. He says the conversation about the credit
card limit never occurred.

Knight also says the vets who treated Fritz gave "appropriate care
under the circumstances, consistent with the appropriate standards of
care."

Dorrell, who plans to begin taking depositions this month, says he
expects the case to be just as complex as a human malpractice case.

There are other parallels between veterinary malpractice and
malpractice cases involving human patients.

Like doctors who treat people, vets express concern that lawsuits will
drive up the cost of their malpractice insurance. So far, though, the
price of vets' insurance has been stable for a decade, usually at less
than $200 a month.

The parallels have not been lost on Dan Bachi, the lawyer representing
vets Jeffrey Sands and John Willie in the Florida case involving Lucky
the sheepdog.

"If society is at a point where we need to limit damages to people,
should we as a society be awarding money for the loss of pets?" Bachi
asks.

"And where do you draw the line? Is it dogs, cats? Is it horses? Is it
frogs? Is it my pet snake?"

Other big cases

Courts have seriously considered veterinary malpractice cases only in
the past few years. Besides the $39,000 judgment awarded to Bluestone
in Orange County, two decisions stand out:

· In 1997, a Kentucky jury awarded $15,000 to the owner of a German
shepherd, Sheba, who bled to death after surgery. The jury was
instructed that the dog could have an intrinsic value beyond its market
value, much like an heirloom.

· In 2000, a judge in Costa Mesa, Calif., awarded almost $28,000 in
general and other damages to a woman whose Rottweiler, Lonnie, had to
have its teeth capped after a bungled dental surgery.

Bluestone may hold the record for an award in a vet malpractice case,
but he has spent more than $350,000 taking it to court.

"Any sane attorney would not take veterinary malpractice cases," Silver
says. "You spend a long time and a lot of money, and you get nothing
back." He says he supports animal rights and takes such cases in order
to represent "those who can't speak for themselves."

Bachi says the case is "a significant endeavor financially and
emotionally" for the vets.

So why don't the warring parties in Lucky's case find a way to settle?

"These doctors worked hard to save this animal," Bachi says. "They feel
victimized by this. They feel falsely accused."

The vets want a jury to decide whether their work fell below accepted
standards of care. They say Lucky died from a pre-existing condition
that went undiagnosed.

Adam Riff says he has spent $10,000 on the case. His lawsuit alleges
that Willie was "defensive and indignant" when the Riffs asked him what
went wrong with the anesthesia. Riff says that rather than continue to
treat Lucky - who was in an oxygen tent after the dental surgery -
Willie sent the Riffs and Lucky to an animal emergency center because
it was closing time at Welleby, "and the next day was (Willie's) day
off."

Riff says that "if he had just told us what happened and said, 'I'm
sorry, forgive me, it was an accident,' we wouldn't be doing this."

This is changing.  Even in relatively backwards Texas (when it comes to
animal rights) juries have awarded very large sums of compensation to pet
owners for the suffering they experienced when losing a pet.

Hey at least I did tell her the following...
"The problem with small claims court is that the Vet will give a load
of medical jargon to the judge and will be deemed the expert (unless
you brought a specialist of equal credentials). Since the judge won't
have a clue he/she will probably side with the doctor."

-mhd

That sentance is exactly what I posted to Candace yesterday or the day
before.  I told  her she would need affidavits from other vets stating
the vet in question committed malpractice.

Most lawsuits are settled out of court.  One does not have to pay
expert witnesses to recover losses.

You're such an a.shole, Charlie.  And yet you still wonder why no woman
wants to sleep with you.

-L.

Yes, this is where I got my preliminary information...that made it seem
unlikely that contacting a lawyer would be fruitful.  I have not
decided yet.  The vet credited my credit card $1K yesterday.  I feel
like I need to take a few weeks to decide what to do further.  There
definitely is an emotional aspect involved and it won't hurt to wait a
few weeks and think about it.  I already have the evidence I would need
if I proceed.

I am trying to be logical and rational, though.  I posted about this in
alt.med.veterinary under a thread called, "Improper Doxycycline
Administration Kills Cats."  If you read that newsgroup, you have
probably read posts by VetinNZ, who seems like a competent, decent guy.
This is what he responded to me:

"Unfortunately it is not common enough knowledge as it takes time for
this
sort of information to trickle through to all members of the
profession. It
has only been recognised as a problem in cats in the past few years
(studies
documenting such cases I have seen are dated later than year 2000) and
although the info has been doing the rounds on the internet and has
been
known about in academic circles it is only more recently that the
average
practitioner has become aware of this. The info has not yet reached the
drug
information leaflet that comes with the drug (atleast not in NZ) and it
is
not mentioned as a possible side effect in many of the 2004 veterinary
pharmacy books around my clinic. It is mentioned in my 2005 UK small
animal
formulary however. It is a shame that this sort of information can not
be
more readily dispersed to the whole profession, especially such an
important
topic as this. I believe the profession lets itself down in not
ensuring
this sort of information reaches all practitioners quickly. Basically
it is
left up to individual practitioners to keep themselves upto date but
this
very much depends upon what sources of info they use. The drug
manufacturers
should be responsible for updating vets as soon as info is available.
Perhaps in the USA this has been the case but not so in NZ. In New
Zealand
we are fortunate to have a doxycycline paste for cats which is much
safer
but for this reason few vets in NZ are aware of the problem with
tablets. I
myself  learnt of this problem a few years ago when surfing the
internet but
i have still not seen mention of it in the vet journals that i read. I
know
it will have been mentioned in many but it has not appeared in the ones
I
read regularly. I suppose I can take some blame for not passing the
info I
learnt onto one of the vet journals. I guess that is the problem, no
one has
taken the responsibility for dispersing this sort of info."

and:

"Yep its very difficult to keep up with all the latest info. As far as
doxy
goes you can simply feed it with food rather than having to chase it
with
water. I believer tablets cut in half are a bigger risk as the sharp
edges
will likley slow transit time down the oesophagus and will also put the

unprotected pill surface in contact with the oesophageal mucosa. Dont
be too
hard on your vets for not knowing this as it is relatively recent
proven
info in cats though has been suspected for longer. I think it is the
profession as a whole that is responsible for not having an efficient
system
for distributing this sort of info to all practitioners. I am sorry you
had
to go through this with your own cat. "

So...I don't know.  Some say it's common knowledge, he says not, my
(former) vet says not.  I do wonder at the lack of response from the
many other vets who post regularly over there.  Either they didn't find
the topic interesting, or they didn't know about the problem themselves
and didn't want to comment on it, or...they didn't want to implicate a
fellow vet.  The latter is how human docs work very often...they might
think another doc is a major quack but they aren't gonna admit it and
testify against him because they don't want the same thing to happen to
them at another time.

Candace