Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS
A story from WHYY Philadelphia News caught our attention. Philadelphia resident David Siff took his sick cat to the veterinarian. The doctor’s diagnosis: fur ball; which did not seem right, at least to Siff. Nonetheless, Siff deferred to the vet’s opinion. Two days later the cat died from complications related to urinary tract infection. Some fur ball.
I was really upset because the vet completely misdiagnosed him, never took his temperature, never did any labs, nothing for his diagnosis. You know, really just gave him a cursory look over and gave him his diagnosis, and we couldn’t help thinking that if he had diagnosed him correctly, maybe we could have saved his life, could have treated him earlier and saved his life.
Siff complained to the veterinary licensing board, but they refused to discipline the doctor.
He then investigated suing. What he learned:
It turns out cats are considered chattel, and you cannot sue for more than the value, which would be about 50 bucks at a pet store. So there was just no recourse.
So Siff could sue for the medical bills but could not recover non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is often the largest component of a judgment or settlement in human medical malpractice cases.
But, if advocates such as Animal Legal Defense Fund Attorney Matthew Leibman have their way, change is coming.
Leibman concedes allowing pain and suffering malpractice suits could drive up the cost of vet care, but that concern is not compelling enough to hold back change.
If we really just saw animals as mere property, we wouldn’t spend thousands and thousands of dollars to keep them alive. We would just discard them and get a new one at the shelter. So the veterinary industry certainly benefits from people having a connection, having a relationship and a bond with their animals. So I think it’s only fair that when they cause that sort of suffering to someone who’s lost a companion animal, that they compensate that person.
If animal owners are allowed to sue for pain and suffering, we have a pretty good idea how this will turn out. The price of taking your dog or cat to the vet will skyrocket. Just what we need, more litigation.
Jeff, my wife is president of the local Humane Society and has been instrumental in building a state of the art animal shelter. We have a foundation for spaying and neutering animals of indigent people and have rescued many, many unwanted and older dogs. Fortunately, we have been able to find the best veterinarians for our pets. I do not know what the answer is, but veterinarians MUST be held to a standard of care–just like physicians. It is my understanding that there is NO standard of care for vets.
Stacy
There appears to be merit in the position that vets should be accountable, but obviously not in such a simplistic fashion as to parellel the same standards applicable to human medicine.
Are pet owners to be held to the same standard of legal responsibility as parents?
Can they be deemed unfit owners if the pet is too fat or not exercised daily?
And how about breeders? Puppy mills?
If vets are to be as medically/legally vulnerable as physcians then those pet owners who are responsible for the daily feeding and care of their animals might have to be held to a higher legal standard of responsibility. The track record of owner responsibility would be open to examination. This may give some overzealous litigants pause to reconsider the contribution of their own “negligence” to a pet’s well being.
Are we going to require DNR orders before we can put an animal out of it’s sufferring?
What happens in the situation where an owner can no longer afford to keeep the pet (loss of job, loss of home, relocation to a domicile where pets are not allowed) and is forced to turn it into the humane society?
How much can I sue the speeding drivers for running over my dog?
Will we have to carry extra auto insurance to cover such possible litigation?
What happens to the insurance policies that owners of certain valuable animals (i.e. race horses) that require the damaged or severly injured animal to be put down within a defined period of time in order to collect the funds that would be issued to purchase a replacement animal?
This could get to be very complicated. It may not be worth it for those who pay into the collective premium pool.
I think the correct place to start is with the Vetinary Boards. They should recognize unprofessional conduct, regardless of the “value” of the pet.
A compassionate and caring Vet can go a long way to ease an owner’s pain at the loss of a treasured pet. Perhaps that was the missing ingredient in the case of the “fur ball” cat death.
This is a situation where the trial lawyers need to be treated like dead fish and thrown overboard. We have way too many lawyers making way too many lawsuits, and the results speak for themselves with the wreck and havoc it’s had on medicine, pharmacy products as well as the general litgation tax on many other goods & services. There’s an old question which asks: “Guess who pays for lawsuit abust?” The answer of course is all of us.
The push for non-economic damages is one which, if allowed to go forward, will impact public policy in adverse ways and with numerous unintended consequences. Dr. Pirie touched on this, above, when she stated:”If vets are to be as medically/legally vulnerable as physicians then those pet owners who are responsible for the daily feeding and care of their animals might have to be held to a higher legal standard of responsibility.” As a practicing veterinarian I can tell you I see and hear about owner neglect an order of magnitude more often than I hear about or see veterinary medical malpractice. Indeed, under a different paradigm of legal recognition of animals, I could bring action against pet owners for gross neglect and failure to provide the best diagnostics and treatment available. Does society really want to go there?
Veterinarians do have accepted standards of care and these are enforced through the licensing agencies and professional disciplinary boards or sub-agencies of the 50 states. While punishment will not undo harm that has negatively affected a pet and its owner, it does have the effect of providing justice, re-education and sending a message to the veterinarian’s colleagues. Malpractice is thus already addressed and as far as economic damages there already are civil procedures available should that be necessary.
i agree with Dr Pirie- well said
i have three cats and love them but vet prices are already high -actually had to have one on tube feeds for a short period of time if you can believe it- i don’t think litigating for pain and suffering is what we need-this was due to an initial mis dx but all came out ok in the end.
we need specific standards for Vets to be held to- they should be investigated if falling out of standard of care.
i actually do think owners need to be held more accountable – if an owner waits until the animal is so sick who is responsible ?
and how far does this go?
i think the owner was angry as no one took responsibllity for the occurance and sounds like he felt the Vet was blowing him off and then the state board blew him off- that is what needs to sick
Pain and Suffering is real but non-objective. There can be no true objective standard for this and it should not be allowed in human or animal medicine. See comments on principles of an objective basis for health care reform:
http://www.afcm.org/principlesofreform.html
This is wrong not simply because of the practical issues of increasing cost, but because it is morally wrong to codify in law such arbitrary standards as pain and suffering, which will necessarily have to be implemented through government force. The arbitrary use of government force is tyranny.
Once we spay and neuter the owners…most of this will go away.
I guess vets know how to do it. They collect money up front, and cannot be sued. What did we all do wrong in medicine? In my opinion, we as a nation have given way too much power to the private insurance companies and the government to warrant how and when we do things. Imagine a medical practice could only be sued for the actual economic value of a patient? Considering the vast majority of lawsuits are filed by indigent patients, who get care for free, this would reduce the need for outrageous liability insurance.
But, we have a country where people do not want to face their own morbidity and mortality. That is where the problem ultimately lies. People never want to admit they can have negative outcomes including death, regardless of how much you explain it to them. Long story short, physicians should not give any discounted care. Collect the money from indigent patients and patients who owe.
We use a similar rule when charging for anything in business. The more they pay, the more they are likely to listen. Look at our public schools. Kids get a free education, and many parents couldn’t care less about the education- they look at the school like a baby-sitting service. Parents who pay to send their kids to a private school will ensure their kids get an education, as they have to pay for it (granted, this is not in every case, but come to a city like Las Cruces NM where the median income is less than 25K).
For instance, take a patient who is in cardiac rehab. While I have not seen any official study on this, I am willing to bet the guy who paid 2500 bucks to get rehab will be more likely to continue his rehab without the supervision of the rehab staff than the guy on medicaid who was just sent.
I think the cat would find this fuss over his or her life much ado about nothing. But we’re not talking about the cat, are we?