I don’t even know where to begin with this.
Is it likely to be futile for me to simply write them a letter and fax them the proof of their responsibility myself? Is it practically guaranteed that I’d have to hire a lawyer in a case like this?
If the vet is an honest guy and knows you well enough to think you are an honest guy as well, sending a letter is worth a shot - but why didn’t you just take the cat back to this guy if you thought it was hit fault?
If he’s not willing to take responsibility, either because he’s a jerk, or truly doesn’t believe it was his fault, I doubt you’ll have much luck. You can always try small claims court.
In any case - how would you prove that it was his fault? Four years is a long time - from his (and the judge’s) perspective, you could’ve taken the cat to another vet in the meantime, or tried to do oral surgery on it yourself and failed, or whatever.
Can you provide some more details of the situation?
We didn’t think it was his fault until the new vet said it was his fault. And we couldn’t take it back to the old vet anyway because the old vet’s in California, and we’re in Texas.
It’s fairly cut and dried. Old vet said he removed one of the cat’s teeth. But he actually only removed about half of the tooth. Later (about a week ago), tooth fragment caused abscess and other related problems requiring surgery. (To clarify: it was only discovered today that the problem was a tooth fragment.)
Going after a vet legally who is now in another state for a tooth removal procedure conducted 4 years ago on a house cat would seem to have about a near zero chance of success. The amount of time and documentation required to show this was the original vet’s fault could very easily exceed the $ 1000.00 at issue in very short order.
Beyond this imagine the original vet’s take on this. A claim pops up 4 years after the fact that you screwed up a tooth extraction on a housecat and this guy (you) wants you to pay $ 1000. to make him whole. The normal reaction is going to be “WTF are you shitting me? Prove it!” at which point the meter starts ticking.
Most people would just write this off to bad luck.
Why would it be that difficult? We’ve got the original vet’s statement that he extracted the tooth, and the x-rays showing that half of the tooth is still in there. (And this Friday we’ll have not just an x-ray but the half-tooth itself to show.)
I don’t see much room for factual dispute here, but am I missing something? What more is required than this, by way of documentation?
The thing is, to hear the new vet describe the situation*, what happened wasn’t a simple mistake, but rather, involved an act of bad faith. It’s not like the old vet might have thought he removed the tooth mistakenly–the situation is such that the old vet would certainly have known very well that he left half the tooth in and would know this could cause problems down the line, and decided not to tell us.
-FrL-
*He is careful to talk in terms of high probabilties, not certainties. Certainties will come on Friday when we take the cat to a specialist to get the tooth chunk removed.