Woman gets a bloody fortune for "emotional distress" after her cat is mauled by a dog

The BBQ Pit
1

Roemer, 71, said the death of the cat left her with sleep disturbances, panic attacks and depression, causing her to begin smoking heavily. The amount awarded included $30,000 for the pet’s special value and $15,000 for emotional distress.

Get. A. Grip.

It’s a cat. It’s a menace with fur. You want to know how much a cat is worth monetarily? Look in the local paper for the “free to a good home” ads. That is the value of a cat. $30,000? Ha! If I were to die tomorrow in combat the death benefit my wife and son would receive $12,000 or so. I can only surmise from this that a cat is worth more than a human being.

What planet are we living on, folks? A cat is something that you forcibly sterilize. A cat is something that you feed food made from diseased animal parts. A cat is something that requires your help to survive because it’s too stupid to figure out that hairballs make it choke.

I give up. I honestly give up. What’s next? Someone’s going to claim trauma because they ate a hamburger and think of the poor cows? Oh, wait, there are people that already do that. Oh, I got it… the poor little mice, so dearly abused in laboratories… wait, that’s done too? Damn.

It’s a pet. When it dies you get another one. Or you don’t. Big frickin’ deal. This guy who got sued should pay the replacement cost of the cat and not one cent more. Or, better yet, make the animal rights lovers happy and go to the pound and get one for free. $45,000? Shit. That better be USDA Prime cat, because I tell you this: I pay $45,000 for some animal it’s gonna be on my plate the next day.

2

Get it?

“BLOODY fortune?”

[crickets]

…is this thing on?

[crickets]

3

This takes me back.

I was stationed in Sicily at the time, and some buddies of mine and I had it in our heads to head up the coast to go to some discos in Taormina. Eric Olsen volunteered to be the designated driver, which was probably a mistake, but the rest of us wanted to drink, so we didn’t argue.

We piled into Eric’s crappy old BMW and took off. Now, Eric never had fully adjusted to the unique style of driving in Sicily, so we were a bit nervous. He was doing okay that particular evening, though, until he hit the cat.

Immediately after he hit it, the cop following us hit his light bar and pulled us over. Now, Eric for one spoke pretty good Italian, and Joe O’Malley did too. But you generally didn’t own up to that with a cop, hoping he’d get frustrated and just let you go.

It didn’t work in our case, though. The cop spoke clear fucking English.

He explained to us that, under Italian law, people who hit an animal on the highway are obligated to clear the thing off of the road so it won’t cause an accident. He offered to let us use his shovel. Okay, well and good. But when Eric scooped the squashed cat up and was ready to chuck it into the ditch, an old lady camy charging up yelling “Mia bambina! Mia bambina!”

You guessed it. On an island crawling with strays, Eric had managed to squash someone’s pet.

She was cussing us out pretty fierce, demanding that the cops arrest us for feline homicide. Eric felt pretty bad, so he took up a collection among us all and offered the woman about $40 worth of lire. We didn’t know if she’d accept, but she did, and it did calm her down.

Finally, we were able to leave, but just as we started, Eric slammed on the brakes again. “Jesus, what did you hit this time,” we yelled. “No,” he answered. “Look at the cop.”

We did, an wouldn’t you know, he was handcuffing the old lady and taking her away…

for selling her pussy.

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Here’s a link that doesn’t require registration.

I think you’re being pretty cold there, Airman. Just because you don’t think of pets as anything more than a disposable sack of meat doesn’t mean other people don’t form attachments to them. Pets have personality and interact with their owners in many ways, those connections are real.

That covers the “emotional distress” part of the award. Now, how exactly does one justify the $30,000 of “unique value” in the pet? That’s a tough one for me.

BTW, if you died in combat, that would have been a result of your personal choice of career. If you died from a dog mauling in your backyard, I figure your wife and son would get a bit more than this lady. If you fell off a cliff while rock climbing, they’d probably get nothing. It’s all in the circumstance.

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Oh, and here’s one more link that has some more info on the situation. The guy spent 3 weeks in jail over this!

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Mr. Moto: Booooooooo

The cat caused her to begin smoking heavily. :dubious: If she watched the cat get mauled, I can see some of the problems (panic, problems sleeping, depression). Something like that can be a heavy trauma. The smoking just sets off by bullshit detector though. It just seems like one claim too many. Next she’ll be suing big tobacco for taking valuable years off her life.

$45,000 is way too much for a cat. 3 weeks in jail is too much for a cat. It’s just a friggin cat.

7

Lets see here.

(1) The dog has been loose before.
(2) The owner promised to control the dog and build a fence.
(3) Both promises unfulfilled.
(4) Owner witnesses dog mangling cat to death on her property.
(5) Defendent does not even show up in court to defend himself.

I’d say the jerk got what he deserved.
And Doors, screw you. There are places on this earth where human life is valued about as much as you value the life of someone else’s pet. Should we use that as the baseline for our treatment of humans?

8

My neighbor’s 10-year old cat was mauled by two dogs. My husband saw it and ran across the street to break it up. He rescued the kitty, but it was too late. He knocked on the neighbor’s door and she came out, horrified to see the condition of her kitty. He died in his arms. It was very traumatic for everyone.

We called the cops about the dogs, mainly because a dog who will maul a cat might very well maul a child. But they ran off. Had they found the owners, I do think they should have paid a hefty fine ($500 or so) for allowing their dogs to roam the neighborhood. A dog that mauls a cat may very well maul a child. I also think that they should have been given a warning that if they got out again, the dogs would be taken away and put down. I would also hope they’d offer the cat owner a heart felt apology. They were dogs just being dogs, and no malice was intended, but you shouldn’t allow your pet to go around destroying other people’s pets.

$45k for a cat mauling? Well, no. But I do think they’re worth more than just “replacement” value.

Also, I wonder what would have happened had the chow owner apologized to the lady. He didn’t even bother to show up to defend himself against the charges that he let his animals run loose.

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Although ** Airman’s** position is understandable, I’m inclined to agree with Cheesesteak. Pets can provide an enormous amount of emotional support, particularly if one is starved for human contact. It’s not unheard of for people to forego essential expenditures to pay for pet food and take the loss of a beloved pet as badly as the loss of a friend or relative. Consequently I think that it’s possible this woman did suffer

Whether she should have been compensated to the extent that she was is another question, but considering that apparently

I think decision to award some compensation was probably just.

Having said that I don’t think the guy should have done any jail time. It’s not like he sicced the dog on the cat, after all.

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Should read:

'Consequently I think that it’s perfectly possible this woman did suffer significant emotional distress.

11

I’m with the Airman on this one - pet’s aren’t people. Some sort of “reasonable” restitution is in order, but $45k for a cat?

12

Conclusions:

The dog owner was irresponsible and deserved a hefty fine.
A 45K award sounds excessive.
Blame your smoking on yourself, lady.

The OP is a good example of the undercurrent running through a lot of “Pets are just animals” threads, i.e. “No one cares that much about me!”

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I guess some people just don’t understand that our cats are our children. For that very reason I went to the trouble and expense to construct a “cat suite” for my furbabies - they only go outside (in carriers) for the yearly trip to the vet. If I saw someone’s dog kill one of my cats, before I collapsed into a gibbering puddle of woe, there would be dead dog all over the neighborhood. I would also do severe bodily harm to the owner if I knew who he was. I would tear up his garden. I would flatten his tires. I would put used motor oil in his gas tank. I would…you get the picture.

That said - if the cat was so darn valuable what in the hell was it doing outside in the first place?

Was it a jury trial? If so, the jury probably figured that the guy’s homeowner insurance would cover it, so “let’s make the old lady feel better.”

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Although I think the award amount was a little high, I think maybe this can stand as a warning for pet owners. Many people who let their animals roam, especially larger dogs, don’t really care that their animals ate someone else’s pet. Like someone else said, what if it was a child?

I’ve had two of my little dogs eaten to death by bigger dogs that were running loose. That’s not something anyone should have to experience once, let alone twice in their childhood. My dogs were in MY FENCED yard, doing nothing more than enjoying the sun using the “facilities”. I didn’t see either one happen, but I did witness the first one’s howling in pain. It’s very traumatic. Especially for someone who is an animal lover.

Now, if it happened to me again, before I went to the courts (which would depend entirely upon how the owner of the murderer dog would respond to the situation) I would kill the other dog. With my own hands if I had to. I will have NO restraint, I will snap it’s little neck like a twig or beat it to death with whatever object I could find. I refuse to let that happen again to me without revenge. The dogs that killed my dogs never got put down for what they did to my family, and I will take out years of pain on any dog that tries to hurt my babies.

Maybe you think animals don’t mean much to people, but mine are like children to me. They are the one thing that keeps me sane. They bring me such joy and happiness. And since my husband and I cannot have children, they are more so my babies. What would you do if a dog killed your child? Never underestimate someone’s love and attachment to their pets.

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No, your cat is not a child. It is a cat. To suggest otherwise indicates some sort of pathology on your part. Your cat is not capable of the sort of emotional interchange that a child is, and if you believe you have the same sort of bond with your cat that a parent does with a child, you should realize that this bond is an illusion that exists in your head. I have no doubt that my cats love me as much as a cat can love a person. It’s just that this is a fairly small amount. Cats have short memories. If I died, the cats would be over it in a couple days. If they didn’t have food in their bowls, they would eat my corpse to survive.

I’m a great cat lover; I have had many pet cats. But the lifespan of a cat is such that anyone who owns cats has had them pass away. I have. It’s a fact of pet ownership. That said, a hefty fine for the dog owner is obviously appropriate, since whatever the value of the cat, he was disgustingly negligent in letting his dog run free. Unfortunately, some people don’t consider the effects of their own actions on others, and only care about the potential consequences they might face for what they do. For these people, we have criminal courts and punitive damages, and it’s a good thing, too. Perhaps this will convince the dog owner to keep his pet chained up - preventing the mauling or killing of a small child. It happens pretty frequently, you know.

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This is true. I’m also a cat lover, who has been saddened by the deaths of five of my cats in my lifetime. Saddened, no more. They are not children, they are not people - they are cats. Animals.

That said, I don’t think$45K is too much for this jerk to pay. He knew the dogs were causing trouble and didn’t do anything about it. Maybe in the future, he’ll know better.

17

While I agree that $45K is excessive, I think your callous attitude towards pets is reprehensible. A pet is not a disposable pen. It is not a commodity. If you lost a child would you like it if I told you to just get over it and then make another one as a replacement?

I seriously hope you are not a pet owner – for the pet’s sake.

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Pathology, Gracie? Loving a cat is a mental illness?

19

This’ll be turned over on appeal.

The right will point to this .001% case as proof of lawsuit abuse while Megacorp pumps mercury into daycare center drinking wells.

The judge was teaching the defendant a lesson for being an ass and not showing up to court. Some will applaud this lesson, while complaining of judicial activism by other judges who actually comprehend law.

Irresponsible cat owners everywhere will feel emboldened to let that cats roam free through neighborhoods. Wisconsin will put to a vote the legalization of hunting irresponsible cat owners. It will pass.

The cat will remain dead. It’s owner will be awarded $5 on appeal.

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No, but equating a cat with a human child may very well be.

My $.02: 45,000 is excessive, but a hefty fine was in order for this guy. He clearly was being very irresponsible. More importantly, his dog should be put down. That would solve some of the problem at least.