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Article Excerpt
Day care centers cater to cats. Bakeries specialize in gourmet dog biscuits. Books like The Hidden Life of Dogs and Why Cats Paint view animals as intelligent beings with complex inner lives.
But despite the rise of pet superstores, pet insurance, and pet resorts, many courts view animals the same way they did in the Middle Ages--as "chattel," little more than a chair or a pair of shoes. That means if a pet is injured by an incompetent veterinarian, the most compensation its owner is likely to receive is the market value of the animal.
That view is slowly beginning to change.
Take, for example, the case of canines Freckles and Muffin. A hunter in Texas shot and killed the dogs, leading a jury to award $4,300. In 1994, a state appeals court upheld the verdict, noting that "a great number of people in this country today treat their pets as family members." (Buckner v. Hamel, 866 S.W.2d 368 (Tex. App. 1994).)
A 1999 case involving a cat originally named Merlin may be even more significant. When Merlin's owner left him with a former partner for more than a year following the Couple's separation, a New York appellate court ruled that he could not take the animal back. The court said the cat, who had been renamed Lovey, should "remain where he has lived, prospered, loved, and been loved." (Raymond v. Lachmann, 695 N.Y.S.2d 308 (App. Div. 1999).)
Animal law is currently enjoying something of a golden age. About 20...
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